


The Age of the Martyrs

by FourteenMinutes



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Hawquisitor, Red Hawke, in which I die slowly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8013157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourteenMinutes/pseuds/FourteenMinutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after fleeing Kirkwall, Hawke is caught on the run - alone. After attempting to flee the Conclave, she emerges from the Fade with the anchor on her hand and the suspicion of the Chantry at her back. Becoming the unwitting Herald of a fledgling heretical faith and de facto leader of the newborn Inquisition is the last thing she wants, but faced with a disaster of her own making, an aspiring God and a former Hero, she finds herself writing another chapter in her dubious history, and deciding exactly what kind of martyr - or tyrant - she wishes to be.<br/>-----<br/>In other words: an aggressive/direct Mage!Hawke who sided with the Mages takes up the mantle of Inquisitor, plunging Thedas into chaos.<br/>-----<br/>Tags (both character/relationships) to be added as the story updates.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hawke family considers the stark reality that they will be forced to flee Lothering when two Wardens and a Witch walk into town. Carver returns from Ostagar. Hawke strikes an unfavourable bargain with an old ally.

"The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins."  
\- Soren Kierkegaard.  


Prologue.

Beneath the weight of the burning heat the mud road shrivels and cracks, and the refugees, too tired or scared to notice, trip and stumble and shuffle across the uneven surface with hollow moans and vacant expressions. Most of them have come from the farms closer to the Korcari Wilds, smallholdings only a stone’s throw from the sleepy village of Lothering, but already their flight has worn their gazes into smooth, apathetic stares, exhaustion claiming every emotion but the stubborn will to survive. To Hawke, most of them look like they are already dead, and with the Blight at their backs, many of them might as well be.

It had been early spring when the rumours started, and as the swallows made their way south towards the heart of the Wilds the stories crept slowly north, wary, hushed tales of darkspawn in numbers that hadn’t been seen in centuries. Disbelief had come easily to Hawke then, when reality stood so far from her own doorstep.

By summer the swallows were flying northwards again, their flight patterns scattered and broken across the cloudy Fereldan sky, but there were harvests to gather and tithes to pay, and the taint was just the shadow in someone else’s eyes. In Justinian, Cailan declared a Blight, and a War. Carver left, Lothering did not change.

Yet somehow, over the slow course of the month of Solace, the town had started to unravel. First there were the refugees, armed with only their most trusted possessions and accompanied by a contingent of Templars, then there were the veterans and the deserters, fleeing the crumbling front lines at Ostagar as fast as their legs could carry them. Then, Barham put his prices up.

“C’mon, don’t be an ass. Look, I know you bought those eggs off of Allison for three bits last week, least you can do is sell them back as cheaply as you bought them.”

He shifts uneasily from one foot to another, watery eyes flickering behind her to take stock of the restless queue who are watching their exchange with feigned disinterest. Lip quivering, he runs the back of his hand across his mouth and glowers.

“Look, I got a business to run Hawke, you got seven bits or not?”

“Seven! You said five before.”

“Keep up your whinging and it’ll be nine bits at this rate.”

“You wouldn’t.” Hawke’s faith in the man’s ability to bullshit falters slightly, and her nails dig hard into wood. Most of the Summer traders left weeks before, spooked by the threat of any sort of conflict in the south, leaving only the most unscrupulous and the most foolhardy – and Barham, who for even his most forgiving of customers qualifies as both.

“I got mouths to feed too.”

“Bullshit. You don’t have a family Barham, everyone knows that.”

“Well, I got my own mouth to feed then, don’t I?” He sneers. “Seven bits is my final offer, so shut your trap and buy something or move along, I’ve got other customers to see to.”

Behind her, the crowd, disappointed at her inability to break Barham, begins to grow impatient, irate tittering passing between them in a wave. There’s the taste of blood in her mouth and the thrum of mana in her veins, and only a few well remembered warnings from her father keep her from acting on both and setting fire to Barham’s wares out of spite.

Reaching into her pocket, she thrusts the rusty coins at him with as much disdain as she can muster in return for three pale eggs that fit comfortably into her outstretched hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Hawke.”

The feeling is not mutual.

“Go fuck yourself Barham.”

Spitting at the floor, she forces her way back through the mass to where Bethany is waiting for her beneath Andraste’s vacant stare.

For as long as anyone who has lived in Lothering can remember the statue has stood in the Chantry courtyard, sternly watching those who pass through the centre of a town with her sword drawn. Years of rain and rebellion have claimed parts of her in chips and chunks, as have the birds who occasionally nest about her head, but none of that seems to diminish the disapproval that radiates from her gaze, a silent, potent condemnation.

When they were children, Leandra had insisted that they visit the Chantry together, sing the Chant with the other villagers, pretend that they were living the lives everyone else was. At the age of seven she cast her first spell, and by the time magic manifested in Bethany there was no use pretending. Occasionally Bethany visits, returning with colourful stories of Orlesian bards and Antivan assassins, but Hawke has no such desire to be reminded of the reason they have to live their life as though they are on the run.

If the Circle would be her prison, then the Chantry is a jailor, and the Templars a cudgel to keep them in line. Sometimes Hawke can’t bring herself to blame Bethany for dreaming after an ordinary life, but then she remembers what it is like to feel fire at her fingertips and it vanishes, along with any sympathy she might have shared for the men made to hunt their kind.

Two Templars stand by the broad wooden door of the Chantry, another nearby wastes his breath arguing with a Chasind, and Hawke’s gaze keeps track of all three of them, not quite daring to let them out of her sight as she joins her sister in the shadow of the Maker’s Bride. Still watching them out of the corner of her eyes, she opens her fist and reveals her haul.

Bethany’s face falls, her pretty mouth setting into a grim line.

“Is that all Barham would give you?”

“Prick threatened less it if I didn’t shut my mouth,” she spits, unable to curtail the venom in her words.

“That’s horrible! But at least… at least you got the supplies that mother wanted.”

Around them, an ominous silence descends, punctuated by the background bustle and the errant drone of Chanter Devons. A few who pass look at them once, a simple gesture of curiosity, one or two even fix the Hawke sisters with stares that suggest something far less pleasant, but none of them stop, and with every blighted soul that walks past the Chantry Marian feels her heart sink a little lower.

They stand, consumed by the weight of words unspoken, of fears left unvoiced, alike and unalike, two apostates in a sea of Templars, two sisters against the world – until Hawke unclenches her jaw and asks the question.

“Any sign of Carver?”

Out of habit, Bethany’s hands clasp together, her still dainty fingers tracing anxious circles over her knuckles. 

“Not yet. But that’s what worries me. Most of the soldiers from Ostagar now are different…” she pauses, uncertain of the word, her gaze resting nervously on Marian. When her older sister does not fill the silence, she continues hurriedly: “I tried asking some of them but they haven’t seen him, or they couldn’t answer. One of the Templars said that there are bandits on the old Imperial Highway, I hope Carver hasn’t been caught up in it…”

“You’ve been talking to the Templars?”

“Only one,” she protests, “it’s getting hard to avoid them when they’re all over Lothering.”

Heart hard and heavy and burning itself out in her chest, Hawke tries to steady her breath as she feels the mana pulsing at her fingertips, the steady throb of a vein brought close to bursting. One by one, she takes stock of every Templar standing within sight of them – the way they’re standing, the weapon they’re wielding, how quickly they could react if she decided to take Bethany and run there and then.

For the most part, they seem disinterested, too harassed by the displaced and disaffected to bother even looking at them, and her thoughts linger on whether Mousey will keep up her end of the bargain. She bites down hard on her lip.

“Not the point. Did they notice you?”

“I think that they have bigger problems at the moment than us –“

“Not the point. Did they notice you?”

“No.”

“No?” She doesn’t mean the word to sound the way it does, as hard as it does, as accusatory as it does, but it comes out in a single breath like a snarl.

Bethany blinks, eyelashes fluttering nervously across her big doe eyes. Perhaps if it had been about something other than the Templars, Marian would have felt guilty for startling her.

“I mean, I don’t think they did.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so? What have I always told you? Don't take unnecessary risks."

"Especially with the Templars."

"Especially with the Templars."

For another handful of moments, neither speaks, while Hawke’s thoughts dart uneasily about her head heavy with the hope that her warnings will one day sink in. She would blame fairytales, the books Leandra always bought that spoke of knights and nobles like gallant heroes rather than self-absorbed pricks.

The mages were always witches or maleficar or Tevinters, ready with a demon in one hand and blood magic in the other to cut down the noble hero. Sometimes, they were the silent, suffering sidekicks who perished to teach the hero some valiant lesson on life. 

Hawke has no plans of dying nobly for someone else’s sake – but Bethany and Carver are the exceptions. Leaving without one or the other is not, and has never been, an option. They can either flee as a family or Hawke can spend her last breaths fighting to find them, it’s that simple. From the moment Carver set his heart on leaving to serve in Cailan’s army, Hawke had planned for every contingency except one.

Just in case Leandra and Bethany have to leave without her, she has three days’ worth of supplies stashed for them by Barlin’s windmill along with a spare stave, and a safe passage up north brokered with one of Mousey’s less salacious contacts. They have to survive this, and so does Carver, because she promised, because she made him promise, because she got down on her knees the day her father died and swore before the Maker she’d sooner burn than let anything happen to him or Bethany, and she made him swear the same the day he marched off for Ostagar.

He has to be alive, even if the King of Ferelden is not.

“Carver can handle himself, he’ll be here, he’s just late, that’s all…”

"Look here, I don't want any further trouble."

Barham's voice cuts through the humid mid-afternoon air like steel, drawing the attention of every single soul he’d managed to short change that morning. Hawke almost smiles at the note of fear that colours his words, her gaze drawn to where a crowd is gathering hungrily around him, obscuring all but the heads of the two figures standing in front of him. Three - make that three - the third stepping forward to level a sword squarely at his throat.

The elf is easily head shorter than the stout, sweaty merchant, and less than half the width, swamped by heavy blue and silver armour covered in enough claw marks to make even a hardened mercenary pause. She doubts Barham can see that much though, from where his eyes are locked onto the tip of her sword, bulging with disbelief at the point only a scant inch from his throat. When the blade doesn’t budge, he panics.

“Calm down! Surely, surely we can talk about this!”

"Good. Then you'll charge these people a fair price, understood?"

Her tone is light, teasing, and distinctly from Denerim, casting a hard clip to her vowels that threatens far more than her words intend. It’s a wonder that Barham hasn’t fainted on the spot, although he looks to Hawke as though he might expire at any second.

"Alright, alright! Just run me out of sodding business will you?"

She only catches what follows by a whisper.

"Bloody knife-ears."

The elf is smiling, her cheeks stiff with something akin to humour, her voice breezy as she gradually lowers the weapon. Around the group, the haze of the air is an ugly mixture of heat and tension threatening to ignite.

"What was that? I'm afraid my ears aren't sharp enough."

"Nothing," he mutters, looking resolutely at his feet as though they might yet save him.

"Nothing? Well," she shrugs nonchalantly, a gesture entirely at odds with the wicked glint to her gaze, "I'll just have to assume the worst then. Oh, and that wasn't me running you out of business, this is me running you out of business."

With the flick of her wrist, she severs the ties binding his wares, sending them spilling across the floor in front of a few hundred hungry refugees. Within seconds, the crowd is upon the goods like bluebottles around a cattle carcass, leaving Barham powerless to do anything but watch.

Which leaves Hawke to watch, half-amused, half-bemused, as the three figures walk calmly out of the chaos they have created and head in the direction of the Dane’s Head Refuge.

One of them is an apostate, not anyone Hawke has ever seen, but someone who holds the knotted black branch at her side with a familiar, fluttering grip. If she is a witch, she certainly doesn’t fit the description the Wilder tales whisper fearfully about, her yellow eyes coloured more with boredom than a vindictive glint as she needles the man beside her with little more than a few words.

He is dressed in the same heavily worn armour as the elf, the same heavy set of blue quilted fabric and bright steel that was designed to provide some defence against the darkspawn.

As much as she hates to admit it, they make her curious - curious as to who they are and what exactly they’re doing in Lothering. They are clearly not refugees, that much is self-evident, and they’re not the taint addled survivors crawling out of the ruins of Ostagar Bethany spoke of, at least not in the traditional sense. From their breastplates and the pommels of their swords glint griffons and the insignia of the Grey Wardens.

While she can recall her father’s fondness for the Wardens, all she can see in that moment is an opportunity too good to pass up. The reward for their capture, by all accounts, is quite substantial, something that has been bandied about in the refugee camp all morning after two of Teyrn Loghain’s men passed through with a warrant for two Wardens matching their exact description.

Turning to Bethany, her mind is already set.

"You wait here for Carver. I'm going to follow them."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Look what they just did to Barham." She grimaces, her expression wrought with the same grievances Hawke has heard a hundred times. Bethany already knows she won’t listen, just like she knows that Bethany has given up trying to persuade her.

"Trust me. All I know, all I need to know, is that there's two men who'll give me 50 gold for turning them in. Just think, we have that, or we leave here with nothing."

"I don't like the sound of it, but just, stay safe sis."

"Since when have I done otherwise?"

Smiling slightly, she trails a reasonable distance behind the trio, her head bowed and her hands still clenched into fists as she listens to them bicker in the doorway of Lothering’s second most popular watering hole. The elf chuckles at one of the apostate’s jokes, then coos teasingly for her companion’s benefit before beckoning them both inside.

Hawke pauses before following them in, paralysed by the weight of the heat and her own indecision. As always, her stubbornness wins out, and she finds herself through the door only moments after them, cursing under her breath.

The interior stinks of stale ale and rancid sweat, the fetid heat of fifty or so refugees mingling with the ill-temper of a handful of the pub's regular patrons. From across the room the two groups watch each other with disdainful glares and dissident muttering, while Danal cleans glasses behind the bar and prays that neither have the balls to bring it down to a fight. For once, however, they are quiet.

In the centre of the inn a small contingent of soldiers is standing in front of the Wardens, beers abandoned on the table behind them in favour of their swords. She recognises the two at the front from the refugee camp, the other four can only be hirelings, or idiots willing to try their luck picking their side before the bar brawl breaks out.

Personally, she always finds it wiser to pick a side after it has started, when it is already clear who is going to win and how.

"Do we have a problem, gentlemen?"

She crosses her arms as the group converge around her, an oddly nonchalant gesture that unsettles Hawke. Loghain’s men keep their distance, the accompanying morons are not so cautious.

One of them gets too close, and in a single swift move the elf strikes him twice in the neck, puncturing his throat with a makeshift shiv. Grabbing his head, she twists it sharply. In the busy tavern, the gurgling snap does not echo, but a terrified murmur does. Shoving the body back at his companions, she cocks her head to one side. She is breathless, but not winded, and her eyes glitter brightly with a kind of fire that sets cities ablaze.

“Call off your dogs before someone gets hurt. Someone else, gets hurt.”

The Commander grunts, jerking his head at the hirelings. Most of them have already got the message, and fall back along some undefined line as he raises his hand in a simple, placating gesture. 

"Didn't we spend this morning asking about an elf matching this exact description?"  
Beside him, the second soldier grimaces, his hand still firmly fixed on the pommel of his sword as he speaks.

"Yeah, and didn't everyone say they hadn't seen her?"

"Well, what can I say? Fashionably late as always. Who wants me?"

"Teyrn Loghain says that the Grey Wardens killed the King at Ostagar. He's offered 100 gold to whoever brings you in."

Hawke’s heart jumps in her chest, her eyes flickering up and down the pint-sized Warden and judging exactly how much mana would be required to take her down. Then she notes the apostate, and she forces herself to reconsider.

"Only 100?" Her face twists into a comical expression of mock horror as she glances around conspiratorially. "The Arl of Denerim would give you twice that for the head of his son's killer."

"Doesn't matter. You're a traitor and we're taking you to Loghain."

They take a single step forward, drawing their swords. She draws her own just as quickly, as does the Warden next to her. In the sickening aroma of the inn, the air begins to smell like raw lyrium, and Hawke watches out of the corner of her eye as the apostate readies her stave, unafraid.

The metal hisses, punctuating the silence sharply. The elf is no longer smiling.

"No can do boys. Why don't you just run along back to your master and tell him to send some better mercenaries next time?"

They bristle at the insult, drawing the attention of a red haired Chantry sister Hawke knows by face, if not by name. Somehow, in spite of the presence of four swords drawn at four throats, she wades serenely into the argument and gets bloodstains on the gold suns embroidered on her Chantry robes.

"Gentlemen, surely there is no need for violence."

"Stay out of this Sister," the Commander spits, “we’re just here for the Wardens.”

"Don't worry, no one's going to get hurt provided these two assholes clear off." The elf winks as she balances the blade level with the second man’s heart. "So… what's it gonna be?"

Most of their hirelings have dissipated, spooked by the threat of serious violence, and even the most committed of fools have retreated to the side-lines, uncertain of where exactly victory lies. It forces Loghain’s men to reconsider their stance, outnumbered and quite easily outmanoeuvred in the confines of the inn.

The Commander changes tack, lowering his sword slightly as if to encourage the elf to do the same.

"You don't want this fight Warden -"

"Hm?" Her blade jumps as his sinks, quivering against his neck and drawing a bead of blood beneath its tip. He freezes, paling, and her responding grin is shark-like. "Oh no, please continue. Why exactly wouldn't I want this fight?"

"You... I... Look, what do you want me to do?"

"Well, how about I spare your worthless life, and no doubt cause the rest of the world great sorrow, and, for me, you deliver a message to Teyrn Loghain."

Wrestling his expression into one of disgust, he admits defeat.

"What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell him a man of his station should really know better than to leave loose ends." 

Dropping the sword, she turns it in her hands as though deep in thought, watching as the light plays along the crudely hewn grey metal. Uneasy, the Commander nods in assent, his breathing terse as he pulls himself back together. As he makes his way to the door, his sidekick follows, and is quickly met by the point of the elf’s blade.

"And where exactly do you think you're going?"

For a full half-minute, he cannot speak straight, stammering and paling as he struggles to comprehend the weapon a split second away from being buried into his chest.

"But, you said we could leave - that you wanted us to take a message to Loghain -"

"No. I said I wanted him to take a message to Loghain. Surely it takes only one mercenary of any reasonable calibre to deliver a simple message?"

"I... No."

"No?" She inquires sharply, a vicious humour underscoring her words.

"I mean yes!"

"Of course you do." With a swift movement she slits the second man's throat, catching his body as it slumps forward towards the ground. Mouth set, eyebrows arched, she turns back to his companion. "Haven't you got somewhere else to be? Or do you want to join him?"

He takes the hint, and, spitting at the floor, turns with his tail between his legs and flees Lothering. If he knows what’s good for him he’ll flee Ferelden, but Hawke has known too many of Mousey’s men to bother suggesting that to him. His pride has been wounded, mauled by an elf no less, and he will no doubt waste his time trying to kill her in the near future.

Gritting her teeth, Hawke hangs back in the shadows as the Warden’s gaze sweeps the room, seemingly apathetic to the shocked, weary expressions of the crowd around her. It passes over Hawke as though she’s not there, and she feels a shiver pass down her spine at its touch.

"Nothing to see here. Move along."

It takes until a few seconds after she has spoken for the mass of people inside the pub to return to the illusion of conversation, even if their gazes linger on the Grey Wardens, desperate, hungry gazes no doubt sizing up the number of mouths 100 gold could feed. Like Hawke is, her thoughts lingering on the meagre possessions that they can take with them when they leave Lothering to avoid the horde.

100 gold would easily be able to buy them passage anywhere they wanted: Denerim, Gwaren, hell even Rivain and they'd still have some left over to start a new life, something to keep her and Bethany out of the hands of the Templars, maybe even buy Leandra somewhere to live like she used to, like the stories she'd told of her childhood in Kirkwall, as scion of the Amell. Maybe Carver could...

But that requires her to take down the apostate, not to mention keeping herself a safe distance from the Wardens while she pinned them down. She would need nothing short of a small army if that was how they dealt with mercenaries, and she had in mind exactly where she could get one.

Slipping out of the shadows, she walked up to the bar and the Refuge’s most regular patron. As she approached, the crowd parted in a wave of whispering and head shaking, revealing the old woman hunched over a flask at the end. No doubt they have the same idea as Hawke, but they don’t know Mousey quite as intimately as she does.

"Marian." Mousey gestures in her direction, and the petty crimelord of some fifty years unceremoniously ousts the woman from the seat next to her for Hawke to sit there, a collection of guilt gold symbols of Andraste woven around her wrist glinting in the dim light of Dane’s Refuge.

Age has claimed her, even if it has not stooped her, scars lost amongst the deeper wrinkles, dark grey hair concealing a burn scar that claims the entirety of her left ear. When she smiles, the puckered skin pulls around her lips, exposing alcohol stained teeth half rotten from years of abuse. Fortunately, she does not smile often, and definitely not for Hawke.

"Figured you'd find me," she grunts, downing half her drink. “Take it you’re not here to pay your dues early this month either.”

"Well, you're right. What do you want me to do?"

"Kill the Wardens."

"Obviously."

"Don't sass me. Chernow wanted a small group of men and women together to take them down, ideally twelve. Told him a woman of your abilities would be worth at least three."

Her eyes narrow, and Mousey’s responding snort is the closest approximation to a laugh that Hawke’s ever heard from her.

"Don't worry. He doesn't know any more than that."

"He better not."

"We do business girl. I'm not going to lose customers on a single job, even one as lucrative as this."

"Why should I trust you?"

Mousey snorts, then finishes the rest of the ale in front of her. "You don't. It's why you're still sitting here. But you either want this job or you don't, so you either take my deal, or -"

"What's the return?"

"Seven gold. Nothing upfront, too much risk."

"Bounty's 100 gold, and you want me to settle for seven measly gold pieces?" She snaps, earning a sidelong glare from Danal and some of the bar’s patrons. Hawke simply glares back, and most of them return to ignoring her.

"Last time I looked Hawke your family just about had seven silvers to rub together. You're in this with nine others, plus my commission fee..."

"I want at least 20, 20 gold or I walk."

But Mousey is indomitable, and merely shrugs, her tone authoritative.

"You'll settle for 15."

"I will?"

"Or I might find myself getting a little less friendly with the Templars."

"Are you threatening me?" It’s a dumb question. She knows when she’s being threatened, she’s been threatened enough to know when she’s being threatened. What annoys Hawke is why every time it happens she feels like she’s about to burst into flame – Mousey can talk straight to her, or she can shut her damn mouth. 

"You're a smart girl Hawke, use it."

In the years she's known Mousey, she's spent all six of them bribing the disreputable woman to keep her and Bethany's presence in Lothering secret from the abnormally large contingent of Templars that were kept there. She’s lost track of exactly how many threats she's received.

It’s irrelevant though when the answer is always the same, and Mousey knows it. No matter what the client or the cost, Hawke would sooner comply than endanger Bethany. She doesn't matter - the Circle can take her and break her and make her Tranquil before she lets them near her little sister. With Bethany and Carver at the front of her thoughts, she swallows her pride, and her irritation, and shakes the old woman’s hand.

"Deal."

"Good. Chernow's down by Barlin's Windmill with some of the others. Bring me their heads."

"Even Chernow's?"

Mousey shrugs nonchalantly: "especially Chernow's."

Taking the neatly presented, beer stained receipt, she dips her head out of begrudging respect and returns outside - past where the Wardens and their witch were talking to the Chantry sister. She no longer cares if they catch her staring, not when she knows that the Warden is little more than a monster.

That the elf had killed them with ease, doesn’t bother Hawke, what troubles her is the nonchalance, the way she acted as though it was merely something that had to be done. She might worry that they could do the same to her if it crossed her mind. Instead, she stews as she walks back across the bridge, and is met with two familiar faces.

Marian Hawke is a tall, bony shadow, a morbidly pale woman with a funk of black hair that falls messily over her sharp blue eyes. At twenty-four years of age, her body possesses neither the same curves as her sister or the dense muscles as her brother, instead holding itself at odd, uneasy angles, as if at any moment she might break into a sprint.

Seeing Carver standing beneath the statue of Andraste, she breaks into a sprint.

"Carver!"

Her brother leans heavily on the statue base, covered in a sheen of sweat with his face more pinched and drawn than she's ever seen him. His armour is haggard, but not punctured, and his eyes are clear of the taint. Swearing in relief, she punches him squarely on the shoulder.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

"Marian, we need to go. We need to leave Lothering now." He splutters slightly, his breathing still laboured, his words hurried.

"We're not ready, mother -"

"I'll get mother and meet you back outside the Chantry. There isn't any time, the darkspawn have taken the lower road."

"The lower road - !” Bethany flinches as if the darkspawn are already upon her, her eyes alight with fear. “But we don't have anything together, we'll have to leave it all behind!"

"We can't stop the horde. Ostagar has fallen, the Grey Wardens are dead."

She doesn’t have time to argue with him, to fall into the fight that they’re already on the cusp of having. But then she doesn’t need Carver to understand, she just needs him to do what she tells him. Cracking her knuckles, she draws her stave and feels a jolt of mana startle the wood to life. Her gaze meets Carver’s, and she sets her jaw.

"Bethany, go with Carver. I'll meet you at the farm. I've got a job to do first."

"Like normal then," he sighs, familiar with the gesture. There will be no argument because she says there will be no argument.

"Just meet me back at the house, keep mother safe. I’m not there in five minutes, you start running."

She waits until she sees them leave the town before starting in the direction of Barlin’s windmill, her fingers dancing nervously along the edge of her stave. Even as she doesn’t trust Mousey she has to trust Mousey, to trust that she knows when to keep her mouth shut, and how many men they need to take down the group of Wardens.

Chernow’s only been around since mid-Solace, a big, burly refugee who once farmed wheat from one of the holdings in southernmost South Reach. He’s a man of few words and fewer criticisms, who fell in with Mousey simply because he didn’t contradict her. As far as former wheat farmers go he’s not useless with a sword, but whether he or anyone else knows how to handle a mage is another question entirely.

Her mind runs over spells, countless useless domestic ones she’d been taught to help Leandra around the farm, a few she’d been taught to protect herself, ones she and Bethany had tried out of old spell books after their father had died, one or two she’d whispered after nightfall, scared she’d one day have to turn them against the Templars.

Is survival base? Surely magic can only serve what is best in her if she is alive? It is a question that’s troubled her for years, inspired countless arguments with herself as she balanced the ragged edge of her stave against the skin of her palm and prepared to draw blood.

But then the Templars have never turned on them, and the people she is preparing to fight are not Templars. Pulling the edge away, she tries to focus her mind on simpler offensive spells, ones that will help Chernow’s refugee militia without revealing her nature at the same time. As she arrives at the foot of the windmill, the fireball in her hand burns out in the hot summer air.

The wheatfield is red with blood, Chernow and his allies in a scattered circle of bodies at the foot of the Warden. Upon seeing Hawke, the elf sighs tiredly, her whole body slumping slightly.

"So... How much are they paying you to kill me?"

Control of her vocal chords fails her.

“These poor men were only going to get 3 gold each... Of course, they were planning to kill their contractor afterwards, but you don't look like her."

"'Tis an apostate." The witch interjects, motioning at where the stave is still poised in Hawke’s hands.

"'Tis indeed. So what's it going to be? I've got a Blight to defeat; are you going to be the next one to try my patience or have you got somewhere better to be?"

The words are childish, but they are the only ones that come.

"I need the money. The Blight will destroy my home."

Slowly, the Warden shakes her head.

"Sometimes you've got to make the hard decisions."

"Like running away?"

"Like refusing to make yourself a martyr."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awakening in her cell, Hawke is faced with a reckoning from Cassandra and Cullen for her past actions and the events of the Conclave. Another survivor of the Conclave comes forward. Hawke and Cassandra reach an agreement.
> 
> tw. blood, gore

1.

She can still hear something, a voice – a woman, perhaps? – ringing in her ears as she struggles back to consciousness. Memories clamour for her attention, all too loud, all too bright, all too impossible, and she struggles to sort them into the believable and the bizarre. Things of which she is certain though, is that there was a mountain, a Conclave, a disaster of her own making, and that she fell out of the Fade while the world burned out around her.

The scent of char and rust and raw lyrium lingers, clinging to the burnt edges of her makeshift mercenary armour, and as she shifts uncomfortably against the cold stone floor she can still hear the hollow echoes of the Fade calling to her.

At the memory, a jolt runs through her, sudden and sharp. A crackle of energy, a nervous pulse, ignites her left hand and engulfs it in a flare of green that sends agonising tremors up her arm. Grunting, she tries to grab at it and finds her hands bound firmly together in a set of big steel cuffs. At the movement, there is a collective intake of breath around her, and she forces herself to become properly acquainted with her surroundings.

It was not designed as a prison, but it is what the room is being used as, the rug that once covered the flagstone floor has been rolled up and propped against the far wall, leaving her to kneel on the half-frozen stones. A bed sits in the corner, accompanied by a pail coloured by small flecks of sick and an upended stool. Four heavily armed, lightly armoured soldiers stand around her with their swords drawn at her throat.

She might laugh if she wasn't exhausted, as it is she barely forces a smile past her lips as they glare at her forcefully. Don't they know that she's a Mage? Don't they know that if she wanted to be free then all the cuffs and swords and walls in the world couldn't stop her? She supposes they do know, given the fearful looks etched into each of their faces.

"Where am I?"

They don't answer.

The hallway outside is filled with the echo of boots, one that gets louder with every step. Her temper flares.

"Where the fuck -"

"Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now."

She recognises the woman, unfortunately. Last time she'd seen Seeker Cassandra had been five minutes or so before she'd broken out the last jail cell they tried to put her in and ran halfway up a mountain, and then blew it up, apparently, if the Seeker's next words are anything to go by. 

"The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead – except for you.”

“You think I’m responsible?”

The question is unnecessary, Hawke knows, a cruel provocation to tempt the Seeker into opening her mouth and saying what she already believes.

“Where is he?”

Staring straight into the hard, unflinching grey of Cassandra’s gaze, she sneers.

“Who?”

“Anders! Your lover, that apostate! Don’t tell me that he had nothing to do with this, that you didn’t help him destroy the Conclave as you destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry!”

There’s no point in fighting the vicious vindication underscoring her words, or trying to uproot the steadfast conviction that has already wormed its way into the Seeker’s head. It’s something she’s seen all too many times, in the eyes of Meredith, the Arishok, her lover – as they looked into her own before setting the world ablaze.

Hawke has had her share of zealots and fanatics and believers, which was exactly the reason she declined Cassandra’s offer the first time around. But that was before she managed to somehow level half a mountain and make herself Thedas’ most wanted, again. She doubts the Seeker will be forgiving this time.

The image of flat, unfeeling gazes lingering in her head, she pushes aside the urge to bite her tongue and fights.

“He’s not here.”

“Then where is he?”

“I don’t know – but he didn’t blow up your damn Conclave.”

“You’re lying!” She snarls, charging past the guards and seizing Hawke’s shoulder. Face to face, scarcely inches from another, Hawke can feel the ragged, uneven heat of the other woman’s breath, smell the scent of sweat and steel and desperation that shrouds her like a cheap Antivan perfume.  
She notes the frantic actions of a woman who spent six months methodically hunting her through the Free Marches, and spits at the floor.

“Whatever you think I did, I’m innocent.”

As the Seeker raises her fist, Hawke braces herself not to flinch, preparing for the blow that never comes. Instead, the door is flung to one side, ricocheting off of the stone walls and shuddering as iron clad boots hammer into the makeshift prison cell.

“Cassandra!”

Hawke almost groans – almost – at the voice of the last man in Thedas she wants to walk into her prison cell.

“Cullen.”

He ignores her, albeit only briefly, meeting Cassandra’s panicked tone with his own.

“We’ve lost contact with our troops at the Temple. By the looks of it we may have to abandon the western path, our position there is untenable… Hawke.”

His eyes do not quite meet hers, but wander over her as if in disbelief. Then the emotion curdles to outrage, and he assumes the same self-righteousness as the Seeker.

“I should have known you might be involved.”

“I’m not.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe. All that talk of advancing the cause of the mages might have got you your way in Kirkwall, but destroying the Chantry? Murdering the Divine?”

“I didn’t kill anyone!”

“You must have been planning this from the very start,” interrupted Cassandra, “why else would you run when we offered you the position of Inquisitor –”

“Because I thought you were going to make me Tranquil!”

The temporary burst of adrenaline that has been keeping her on the offensive since the Seeker entered her cell is fast draining, and she slumps back into her bonds, chest heaving from exertion. In the quiet that follows, the uneven edges to her breathing are painfully pronounced, echoing in the small chamber.

Cullen says nothing, the fact does not surprise her. He does, however, have the good grace to look guilty, and she swallows a bitter sense of déjà vu. Perhaps the events at Kirkwall have changed him – or perhaps he’s still the same man who let Meredith drive her sword through half the mages of the Free Marches. If she has it her way, she has no desire to stay around and find out first hand.

When it finally comes, puncturing the stunned silence, she doesn’t need to hear the Seeker’s question to give her the answer.

“Why –?”

“You think the Chantry would accept me as anything? I’m the one that started the whole bloody thing.”

“So you thought we would give you the brand.”

“Or the noose.”

Much to her surprise, Cassandra sighs, her tone recalcitrant. “I – can see why you might think that of us. But what did happen then?”

“Does it matter? You don’t believe me.”

“Why don’t you start by explaining.”

“Because I don’t know what happened either.”

“What do you mean?”

Sighing, she tries to push her way through the thoughts clamouring for attention in her head, and succeeds only in giving herself a headache. She hates the answer, but it’s the only one she’s capable of giving – and it’s the truth.

“I was running. Things were chasing me, and then… someone, a woman? She reached out to me…”

“Commander Cullen, Seeker Cassandra!” The scout stumbles, practically falling through the open door. His face shines with sweat, his chest heaves with exertion as he forces the words out past uneven breaths. “We have a survivor – one of the negotiators survived the blast.”

The Commander and the Seeker exchange glances before Cassandra nods in assent. “You see to the survivor, Cullen. I will take Hawke to the Rift.”

“Very well.”

As he storms hurriedly out behind the scout, Cassandra extracts a key from the belt at her waist and removes the cuff. Hawke’s wrists glower a faint red from the chafing, but are otherwise unharmed. She watches warily as the Seeker extends a hand to help her to her feet, then ignores it and pushes herself upright.

“I thought you didn’t trust me.”

“I don’t. But it will be easier to show you.”

As Cassandra heads out the door, Hawke watches the men still standing at the corners of the room, their postures stiff from exhaustion. They make no moves to stop her, if anything, they seem happy to see the back of her, and she wonders how long they have been made to keep an eye on her, forced to stand in the freezing cell with one hand constantly on the pommel of their swords. 

The hissing and spitting and muttered condemnation that she expects is absent, though, and as she follows the Seeker down the narrow corridor past them, she can swear that they are praying. In her chest, her heart tightens like a screw is being turned on a valve.

Stepping into the hard green glare of the Rift, it stops momentarily.

The – whatever it is – stretches upwards above the Frostbacks like a burning beacon, another Ishal, an ugly omen of worse things to come. Around it, the air ripples and contorts and groans beneath the weight of the Fade, turning the sky into a storm-tossed sea of Rifts about the ruptured Veil. It is nothing like the explosion at the Kirkwall Chantry, because it looks like the end of the World, yet it is all she can see in that moment.

Because both are fire and ruin she cannot run from – this is your fault, they whisper, this is your responsibility. The World is ending and her feet have turned to lead.

She does not notice the look of surprise that flits across Cassandra’s face, nor the way her hand momentarily drifts from her sword. As another angry flare of magic tears through her she can’t help but fall to her knees, crying out in surprise.

“Each time the Breach expands, your mark grows… and it is killing you.”

Gritting her teeth, she digs her nails into the mark, trying to silence, or at the very least calm, the furious buzz that hums around it. She succeeds only in making the tips of her fingers feel like they are on fire. Her mind is little better.

“The – what?”

“We call it the Breach, it’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It’s not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“And you think, you think I did that? That I can do that? There’s not a mage alive that could do that, even with blood magic.”

“Not alone, no.”

“Of course,” a weary laugh rattles out of her throat of its own accord, “so I did this, to myself? Why?”

“Do not think me ignorant of what happened outside of Kirkwall, Hawke. I know that you allowed yourself to be captured in order to let Anders escape –”

“So I would damn myself to let him destroy the Conclave… That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“Not intentionally. Something clearly went wrong.”

Glaring at the Seeker’s extended hand, she sits back on her thighs and feels the cheap steel buckles on her boots bite into her buttocks. Cassandra does not retract her offer, nor does she rescind her accusation.

“You cannot deny that you ran from us the last time we tried to speak to you, even if your motives were as you claim. So far you are the only one to have survived the events of the Conclave. Someone is responsible, and you are our only suspect.”

“What about Anders?”

“You wish to prove his innocence? This is the only way.”

“So I don’t have a choice.”

Cassandra’s hand falters, and the brief pause before she speaks is more disapproving than any condemnation she has offered Hawke thus far.

“None of us has a choice.”

“Then I wouldn’t want to disappoint the Maker.”

Seizing the steel gauntlet, she allows herself to be helped back to her feet, allows the Seeker to grab the back of her armour and manhandle her through the makeshift camp that sits in the shadow of the Chantry. She chafes beneath the feel of steel too close to her neck, but she allows it. If only because the odds of making it out of the Frostbacks while the sky is still burning and the Chantry wants her dead are too low for even her to consider running.

As they pass between traders and doctors and workmen, their gazes land on her clumsily, uncomfortably, uncertainly, with the same strange mixture of doubt and hope and anger and fear that had coloured the faces of her guards. She doesn’t know whether they want to lynch her or kiss her, and from the confused muttering that passes amongst them, they don’t know either.

Their indecision is broken by the return of Cullen, and they sweep to one side in a rush of whispers, allowing him to walk through them accompanied by a pale, dainty mage who doesn’t appear to have survived having half a mountain dropped on her.

To Hawke, she doesn’t look like she would survive the experience of having half a mountain being dropped on her. But somehow her blue and gold Circle Robes are tattered and torn, decorated by a tangible layer of rubble dust and soot, as is her face, still flush with the familiar effort of sustaining a strenuous spell. Her blonde hair, formerly elegantly pinned and bound, hangs in wild, matted clumps, and at her side her steel and ebony stave hisses faintly.

“Oh, my Lady Seeker! And the Champion of Kirkwall!”

She isn’t Orlesian, but the faintest pretence of a Royan accent hangs on her words as she practically drops to her knees in front of them.

“Lady Luise Trevelyan,” she babbles, “First Enchanter of the White Spire.” Regaining her composure slightly, she dips into a curtsey. “I had thought no one else could have survived the explosion, I tried my best to shield myself and poor Knight-Commander Prospère but the blast was simply too strong… The Maker must have been watching you closely, dear Champion.”

Against her back, Cassandra’s grip tightens at the woman’s words. Hawke lacks both the information and the inclination to try and resist her.

“You were present in the Temple during the events of the Conclave?”

She blinks bashfully, with a sidelong glance from beneath doe like lashes that is far too pronounced for Hawke’s liking. To all appearances, she seems utterly useless, and yet experience suggests otherwise.

“As chief negotiator for the combined forces of the Rebel Mages, I had hoped to curry some favour with Prospère prior to the start of formal negotiations. We agreed to meet in the Temple Chantry to discuss things before Justinia. I had hoped she might be a calming influence, given the habit of the Knight-Commander… But oh! Poor Justinia!”

Swooning, she sways backwards into Cullen, her eyelids fluttering wildly. 

“I’m sorry… It is just, simply too terrible to think about. To think that you and I are the only ones to survive, Champion… My heart breaks for Orlais, and all the Maker’s faithful.”

“Are you alright?”

Gazing wide eyed at the former Templar, she takes a few uneasy breaths to steady herself and nods tentatively.

“I will be fine, but I must rest or I fear I will be of no use to anyone.”  
Nodding shortly, Cassandra turns to Cullen, her expression set with determination. Hawke wonders if they’re thinking the same thoughts, or if she’s imagining the silent exchange that happens between them without a single word. It’s one of concern, one that concerns her but does not concern her – a silent admission of powerlessness.

They don’t know what’s going on any more than she does, and there is no picture that fits the scraps of description offered by the former First Enchanter.

“You go, Commander. Take her back to the Chantry and I will meet you at the forward camp.”

“Very well. I take it you’ve had word from Leliana?”

“Not yet,” she replies, grimacing. “I have not heard from her since she left to send word to the Chantry.” 

“She’ll make it, Maker watch over her.”

“Maker watch over us all.”

Cassandra moves so sharply to continue walking that the movement catches Hawke unawares, and she ends up staggering, stumbling to keep up as she is forcibly marched out of the small mountain settlement. Her pace does not relent as they take the winding mountain path, and she offers nothing in the way of conversation as a distraction from Hawke’s tired muscles.

For once, she finds herself in the situation of being forced to break the quiet herself, albeit more out of necessity than any kind of desire to. Thinking of Varric, she lunges for the first topic of conversation her mind can muster.

“Do you believe her?”

“I believe that she was present at the Conclave, if that is what you were referring to. I do not believe that she was involved with its destruction –“

“Because I’m the suspect?”

Cassandra grunts, but does not elaborate.

As they continue onto a small stone bridge, a group of scouts dip their heads and acknowledge their passing as they dart furiously between scribbled orders and scattered supplies, their faces slick with sweat. As Hawke goes to open her mouth and start a fight, a blaze of green catches her eye and something altogether different comes out instead.

“Shit.”

It’s magic, a bolt of energy from the Fade so raw and angry it smells like lyrium and sounds like a scream as it strikes the bridge. In a single heartbeat, it breaks on the flagstones, flaring, tearing into the structure. Beneath them, the stones give way, crumbling beneath the single sharp flare and crashing to the ice-covered river below.

She doesn’t know at what point the Seeker relinquishes her grip on her, only that it’s after she feels her stomach give way as the bridge falls from beneath her and before she hits the ground.

The sharp, fragmented cocktail of ice and rubble tears through her palms with ease. As she stands up, shaking, she’s still too in shock to register the sharp sting of the wound, only noticing the angry red of her skinned hands.

Behind her, she can hear groans of people far less fortunate than her, their bodies entangled with the remains of the bridge. Instinct propels her towards them, ignoring the scrape of stone along her skin as she claws through the rubble towards the sound of a voice. She ignores everything – the sudden hum of energy, the hiss of steel as a sword is unsheathed, everything up until a familiar snarl breaks her blind concentration, forcing her to turn and face the creature.

The shade peers at her with its single, white eye, noting her presence with a guttural growl. Hawke’s hand reaches for her side and clutches at air.

It lunges, claws slashing at air and she feels fire spring to her fingertips, antagonising the wounded skin. Raising her hand, she flings a fireball at it, then another, darting to one side as it howls with pain and lunges for a second time.

Cassandra is distracted with another, her sword drawing shadows as she slices through the shade with practiced precision. Hawke’s efforts are more laboured, beleaguered by tiredness and overshadowed by the distraction of the thing pulsing excitably in her palm, staining every spell with streaks of green.

Fortunately, the shade does not manage a third lunge. Balling her hands into fists, she uses what little energy she has for spellcasting into summoning a single column of fire, shrouding it in a spurt of flame. With a shriek, it dissipates in a grey plume.

The whimper of pain behind her serves as a reminder, and she darts back to the body still half entombed in the mound of rubble. With nails and grit and stubborn determination she digs through the shards of stone, unearthing the scout. Part of her brain registers Cassandra joining her, the other ignores her, blind to anything but the ceaseless need to continue digging. Within a matter of moments, they free the figure, and the two gently manoeuvre her to the end of the bridge.

Blood pours from her head and arm, greyed with dust on the former and turning the heavy material black on the latter. But the armour has served its purpose, the wounds are shallow to the brush of Hawke’s minor healing spells, skin quickly stitching itself up beneath a faint, flickering pulse of magic. The woman is more in shock than anything else, watching in silence until the two withdraw.

Of the four scouts on the bridge, two of them avoided the blast completely, and join them quickly muttering thanks and praise as they hurry to their wounded comrade’s side. The fourth was not so lucky.

It takes them a few minutes to extract him, with a mixture of magic and sheer willpower, aided by the three other scouts when it becomes clear that the keystone has no intention of shifting from the man’s leg.

He’s alive, for which Hawke mutters a blessing, although his metal breastplate and pauldrons have been crushed around him, and have to be cut off to assess the damage. His leg, however, is quite evidently unsalvageable, several ugly juts of bone sticking through the skin of his calf. As they manhandle him to a safer spot, he moans loudly, a desperate sound that clings to the inside of Hawke’s head.

For the first time since the bridge broke, she speaks to the Seeker.

“I can’t heal him.”

“We’ll take him back to Haven, make sure he gets to a healer.” Interjects one of the women, resting her right hand above her heart in a salute. “You did a wonderful thing my Lady, we’ll see to it that he’s taken care of.”

“Take him to Adan,” adds Cassandra, “he should be able to correct the bone.”

Another salute, and the group tentatively lift the wounded scout and begin to make the journey back. Cassandra and Hawke lapse back into quiet for a while, their breathing heavy and their hearts still hammering from exertion.

“It’s over.”

“Then I fear our forces are less in control of the Valley then I had thought… We must move quickly, before this happens again.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a small bottle of mana and hands it over to Hawke. Somewhat more reluctantly, from behind her back she produces Hawke’s stave. “You don’t need a staff, but you should have one. I cannot protect you.”

Eyes locked firmly on the familiar twist of wood in the Seeker’s hands, she sighs. “This is madness. We should be running in the other direction.”

“I must believe that this is the will of the Maker.” Slowly, Cassandra sets the stave in Hawke’s hands, although she does not quite relinquish her grip, leaving the two women to hold the branch between them in an unspoken battle of wills. “That your actions are part of His plan.”

She lets go and steps back, leaving Hawke free to answer her. If it’s a question, though, it’s also a dare, a challenge, one that she is more than capable of rising to. Cassandra is waiting for her to turn and run, practically telling her to, asking her to fulfil the crushing sense of disappointment she has held in her heart since the first time Hawke fled from her.

Swallowing hard, Hawke downs the mana and smashes the bottle on the surface of the frozen river. As the buzz of energy returns to her fingers, she silences her sense of self-preservation.

“Lead on then.”

“Good. There is a Rift in the Valley we are guarding, we will need to go there before we head to the forward camp. There is someone who will be pleased to see you.”

A small smile creeps across Hawke’s face in spite of herself.

“I should’ve known Varric would be here.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke is reunited with Varric and meets Solas, she closes her first rift and argues with Cassandra over the issue of mages. A beleaguered mercenary leader prevents Chancellor Roderick from inciting a riot.
> 
> (A lot less happened in this Chapter than I intended, for which I apologise. It also ended up quite dialogue heavy. One of those Chapters that felt like pulling teeth, may be edited later.)
> 
> tw; violence

2.

Apart from the occasional flares that fall from the sky dispensing shades and spirits trying to kill them, the journey to the Valley Ruins is no more dangerous than the Wounded Coast, simply with more snow and ice, and no raiders. Instead, they are faced by a small army of demons, and by the time they near the Ruins the air around her stave crackles with a constant angry heat.

She preferred it the last time she ran, when the only thing she had to worry about was the Seeker at her back and the snow getting through the cracks in her armour. Sometimes, she even forgets why she fled the first time they caught her, but catching a glimpse of Cassandra out of the corner of her eyes always serves to remind her.

It’s not that she regrets letting herself get caught - far from it, she’d do it again in a heartbeat if circumstances were the same. It’s simply that with every passing second she feels the choice slipping away from her, with every step she takes with the Seeker at her side her future grows a little narrower.

Perhaps Varric felt the same, after Cassandra cornered him in Kirkwall – but then she doubts that. Varric’s never been one to let a little thing like circumstance get him down.

Hawke hasn’t seen him in almost a year, since they parted ways in the wilds of the Free Marches. Of everyone who had left Kirkwall with her – Aveline, Fenris, Isabela, Merrill, Anders – he had been one of the last to leave, wishing her luck as she and Anders slipped off into the night.

She’d heard word of his book about her, ‘Tale of a Champion’ – she’d never got around to reading it though. Then one day she’d heard from one of her contacts in Kirkwall that he had been captured by people from the Chantry, people looking for her, and she’d been forced deeper into hiding. She hadn’t even known he’d left Kirkwall.

It seems fitting that he’s here though, and it puts some of her shattered nerves at ease. The world may be ending, but at least Varric will be at her side – and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mounting the stone stairs to the ruins, they are met with the sound of clashing steel and erupting fireballs. Their steps become more urgent, Cassandra draws her sword again, Hawke her stave, in preparation for the inevitable battle ahead.

What Hawke isn’t prepared for, however, is the Rift that dominates the centre of the battlefield, casting the ruins in a livid green hue. At her presence, it contorts, swelling as it disgorges another shade into the fray.

The mark on her hand flares angrily, and a pulse of pain shakes her arm. Around her stave, her hands begin to tremble, suddenly frail in the presence of the rift into the Fade. Swallowing fleeting terror, she gets angry.

Swearing, with the flick of her wrist she forces the shade back. Springing off the small ledge that separates her and Cassandra from the main body of the ruins, she unleashes a hail of fire on the creatures and jumps into the fray. To three shades harassing an elven mage, she casts a fork of lightning, watching as the bolt springs effortlessly between the creatures and binds them in a purple haze.

The elf gestures to her in thanks, and quickly summons a barrier around them, shielding their skin with a faint blue sheen.

“Hawke!” Varric’s voice rises above the din, and she turns to see him, Bianca at hand, shooting the shades aside with ease. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” She retorts, grimacing as she lets loose another bolt of lightning and forces one of the shades to dissipate.

Nearby, Cassandra quickly dispatches another, leaving the scouts to make short work between them of the final one. Then the Rift bloats, growing and distending in swollen anticipation.

“Quickly, before more come through!”

Surging to her side, the elf grabs her wrist and thrusts her hand at the Rift before she can react, plunging the mark on her hand deep into the tear in the Veil. A slight buzz, a faint hum, and her hand feels like its vibrating as the tear ripples around it.

It burns, not like the fire she can summon to her fingertips, but something else entirely. Against the rift, the mark burbles and hums and pushes itself wider, creeping across her palm, curling up her fingers, green tendrils reaching for green like a lightning bolt drawn to a tree. The feeling that responds in the pit of her stomach is want.

Somehow, the mark tugs at the Veil beneath her skin with the tenderness of a lover, pulling and stretching and wanting. Yet it waits. Even as it reaches into the Fade it remains uncertain, restrained, as if it is awaiting her command.

Swallowing hard, she tries to think past the burning sensation crawling up her wrist. It’s unlike any magic she’s ever wielded, all too alive for her to control it completely, pulsing beneath the nervous flutter of her thoughts. A loose thread of the Fade snakes up her arm, licking at her elbow, and she jerks her hand back.

Shut. She wants it shut.

Something responds, and the mark hums with magic. Around her hand, the Veil begins to close, pulling in towards the mark like winds to the eye of a storm. With a shrill whine, it finally pulls closed, and she reels back from the force of the Fade pulling shut with her hand still inside.

Flinching as it seals, she glares at the mark. It is quiet. The thread of Fade that scars her hand seems, at least for the moment, content, and the sensation scares her.

“What is this?”

“It appears that whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand.” The elf responds, although the answer does little to soothe her ragged nerves.

“You know what this is? What it does?” 

“I theorised the mark might be able to close the Rifts that have opened in the Breach’s wake – and it seems I was correct. You may hold the key to our salvation.”

Salvation? When has she ever cared for salvation? Kirkwall at least is just one dirty, demon plagued city among many – salvation is a much more universal concept. And it will not take the death sentence off her hand.

“It had to be you Hawke, didn’t it? You couldn’t just stay out of trouble.” Varric’s voice calms her slightly, and reminds her of part of the reason she’s still there in the first place.

“Well, someone’s got to keep you in business. Might as well be me.”

“Might as well be you.”

Dropping to her knees, she hugs him tight. He smells like Kirkwall still, like paper and cheap booze and knock-off Nevarran perfumes, and, as much as she hates to admit it, like home.

“And here I was just getting used to the idea of being ass deep in demons forever.” He chuckles bitterly.

Withdrawing, a smile fights its way to her lips in the form of a smirk. There is no time for apologies, and she doesn’t have the words for one.

“What in the Maker’s name are you doing here?”

“I brought him here to tell his story to the Divine,” Interrupts Cassandra. “Clearly that is no longer necessary.”

“I didn’t realise this was a reunion.”

“I sent a letter to Fenris but I don’t think he could make it, too busy carving a path through Tevinter slavers," Varric quips. “Shame, we could use an angry elf swinging a greatsword.”

“So we get one with a stave instead?”

Turning to the elf, she silently assesses the skinny figure of the hedge mage. He is shorter than her and almost as skinny, bundled in well-worn furs and with a wolf’s jawbone hanging from a rough cord around his neck. The bald dome of his head glistens with sweat, but his face is not flush from exertion, betraying the casual ease with which the spells came from his staff.

He may not have a greatsword, but she has few doubts that the seemingly inconspicuous looking elf in front of her is dangerous. Varric is quick to catch on her suspicions, ones he has no doubt noted himself, and nods. 

“Chuckles is friendly, don’t you worry. I’m sure we’ll become great friends in the Valley.”

Seizing the opportunity, the elf speaks.

“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live.”

With one hand holding the still restless mark, she squints at him in search of clarification. His returning gaze is level, calm, and entirely smooth, like a pebble worn away by years of river water, betraying nothing other than a professional sense of curiosity.

He is not, and has never been, a Circle Mage, she can discern that much. His stave is roughly hewn but cleanly finished, designed for practicality and not adorned with personalised accoutrements and other idle creations. But aside from the shaft of wood by his side, and perhaps more tellingly, he has the aura of a man who has never seen a day’s worth of walls in his life. Something about it unnerves her.

For his part, Solas is not particularly bothered by her silence.

“When I saw the Breach, I approached Cassandra to offer assistance. She in turn brought you, and the mark, to my attention. In times like these we cannot afford our old prejudices. If the Breach is not closed, we are all doomed, regardless of origin.”

“Nothing like the end of the world to bring people together.” Varric adds, and Hawke snorts derisively.

“Like you,” Cassandra notes, “Solas is an apostate.”

Like her? Other than the fact that he has never been forced beneath the watchful gaze of the Chantry, Solas is nothing like her. At that moment, she strongly suspects that there’s not a single damn thing in the world that is like her.

“Technically all mages are now apostates Cassandra.”

“She means that some of us have been off our leash longer than others.” Hawke clarifies.

The Seeker does not rise to the challenge, and Solas takes the animosity between the two in his stride.

“Then you will understand that I have gathered experience far beyond that of any Circle Mage, and the magic involved here is unlike any I have seen. You are a mage, but I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such power.”

“That’s because I don’t.”

The Seeker nods slowly, almost reluctantly, and her eyes sweep across the group, coming to rest heavily on Hawke’s head. But there is doubt in them, not for the first time but certainly for the strongest, and that gives her hope. Hope that perhaps she might get away with closing the Rift and running to the other side of Thedas.

“Very well. But the Breach remains. We must get to the forward camp quickly.”

Continuing through the ruins, they are soon forced to deviate from the path, taking a small trail down into the heart of the burning valley. Out of the corner of her eyes, Hawke watches her companions and weighs her options.

If she runs, Varric will run. If she runs, Cassandra will undoubtedly chase her to the other end of Thedas. Which simply leaves Solas, and at that point in time she has few doubts over whose side he would sooner support. He may not be a Chantry elf, but he is in their pocket.

So she shuts her mouth and keeps walking, ignoring the slight protestations her muscles make at the abuse. Life on the run has made her harder, leaner, given her eyes that daren’t rest on a single place for too long for fear of missing out on the first sign of danger, but even a year’s worth of living in hiding has not prepared her for traipsing through the battle-scarred valleys of the Frostback Mountains.

After a while, it is easy to keep quiet, when the demands made on her by her body begin to overwhelm her thoughts. 

As they move down towards the lake, the wretched scent of burning wood, flavoured with acrid notes of charred flesh and smouldering fabric, rises to the back of her throat and makes her gag.

It is a house, one of the small, mountain lodges kept by shepherds, consumed by fire. The vivid green flames that had brought the blaze into existence have long since burned through to bitter oranges and reds, but the building still burns freely, and from the half-collapsed shell rises a column of soot blackened smoke. 

Near the door, a single robed corpse lies outstretched, stave still clasped in one hand, sword struck firmly through their chest. 

At the sight, she feels her chest constrict painfully. The mage, a small, dainty elf, is covered in bruises and burn scars, hallmarks of split seconds spent too close to something that blazes with the intensity of the sun. The only thing that killed her, however, is the single blow from the blade, an expected betrayal from someone who was supposed to protect them.

The corpse’s eyes have already been shut, like some last, sick admission of a humanity that was denied to the mage only seconds before. In her chest, the unease threatens to ignite into an inferno.

Stopping by her side, Solas sighs.

“Hunted like an animal. It is a shame that the War between Templars and Mages has come to this.”

“It has always been like this,” she spits, unable and unwilling to curtail the venom in her voice. Glaring at Cassandra, she silently dares the Seeker to contradict her – and is not disappointed.

“The Templars are sworn to protect against the dangers of magic, we are still unaware of the effect that the Breach will have on mages. We cannot risk abominations. ”

“So you’d murder every last mage in Thedas?”

“That is not what I –”

“If you cannot risk abominations then, Cassandra, why am I still alive?”

“Do not try me. We still have need of the mark –”

“This?” She raises it defiantly. “You don’t even know what this is capable of, what I’m capable of…”

“And I will not hesitate to kill you if I think it is necessary,” Cassandra’s snarls. “You believe that you have the right on your side, when it was your actions that caused all of this. You are responsible for this, as you are responsible for the mage uprising.”

“I was supposed to stand back and let Meredith slaughter the Kirkwall Circle?”

“You let that apostate –“

“If it wasn’t for Anders the Chantry would have let the Mages be massacred! Something had to be done!”

Sighing, Cassandra throws her hands in the air. “Every time I believe you may be innocent, you force me to accuse you once more.”

“You are perfectly capable of accusing me without any hep,” she hisses. “I might as well have destroyed the damned Grand Cathedral while I had the chance!”

“You would not!”

She pulls her staff, and the Seeker pulls her trump card. She can feel the air grow heavier around her, begin to weigh uneasily on her hands. It is like being cased in invisible lead, her magic curtailed to a tiny radius about her staff.

Suddenly the air seems tighter in her throat, about her neck, an iron necklace to weigh her down and drown her. And with every spell that dies before it reaches her staff she grows a little angrier, a little more forceful, her powers brutishly caressing the edge of the Seeker’s abilities.

She could overturn the embargo. Not easily, but a single blast would be more than enough to throw the shackles and –

Thud!

The bolt misses both of them by a scant inch, striking the fresh snow about their feet and startling it into a small flurry. Distracted, both turn the weight of their poisonous glares at the disruption, needling the dwarf. Varric simply sheathes Bianca, shaking his head.

“Do I need to remind you that there’s a hole in the sky?”

“No,” snorts Cassandra, sheathing her sword. “You do not.”

Hawke takes slightly longer to yield, but eventually even she admits defeat, returning her staff to her side and crossing her arms.

“No. And I do not need a reminder of why the Chantry failed.”

“Not all of the Chantry wished the mages harm, Hawke. And I am reminded of why I must not pin my hopes on you.”

Hawke has no answer but terse, sullen silence, and it is one under which they all suffer as they continue out of the dip of the valley, beginning to the steady climb to the Forward Camp.

The owner of the sword has beat them to it. The Templar stands by the rift, sword-less, shield raised uselessly against a gnarled limbed Terror Demon tearing at it with root-like claws. Upon noticing them, her gaze turns for the few seconds long enough for the creature to slip past her defences and bury its nails in her face, carving long lines through the soft skin. With a howl of victory, it springs up and tosses its victim high, using the newfound elevation to rip the Templar’s head off.

Hawke feels like she is going to throw up as the head rolls limply across the snow-covered hill. Instead, she pulls her staff and disperses the creature back to the void, before raising her hand defiantly and thrusting it into the rift, sealing it.

Beneath the hubbub of the dying Rift and the muttering scouts, Hawke can hear Cassandra praying, can hear the condemnation that comes from her lips before it broaches the taut, frozen air.

“All who die in this war are just men, Hawke.”

“Sometimes the methods of men make them worse than monsters. The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men -” She stops abruptly, the words dying on her tongue. They’re not hers, but Anders’, and they taste like ash on her tongue.

The Seeker does not respond, instead approaching one of the scouts and having the doors opened before them. What lies behind the sturdy wooden bulk is madness.

A crowd of refugees, mostly farmers, a few Templars, has gathered around a man in Chantry robes, their conversations blurred into an angry haze of shouting and baying. Upon hearing the door open, a few turn, and one of their voices rises in a vindictive shout.

“There she is!”

They surge forward when a figure steps from the sidelines and effectively curtails them, his looming mass more than intimidating enough to halt the angry flow. The Qunari raises his hands, gesturing at them to calm down. The Chantry figurehead is quick to ignore him.

“Seize her!”

“Haven’t you caused more than enough trouble already?” The Qunari’s tone is scathing, and the man quickly blanches. Turning back to them, he crosses his arms. “You have my apologies for the reception. The name’s Adaar. Chancellor Roderick here doesn’t like being upstaged.”

“Upstaged -!”

“These are good people, honest people, but they’re scared, and they think you’re responsible for the death of the Divine. A few here were present for the Conclave too, minor clerics and the like, they’re too in shock to do anything though…”

Roderick’s voice jumps an octave as he struggles to be heard above the dissident murmuring. “I refuse to be ignored! As Grand Chancellor of the Chantry, I hereby order you to take this criminal to Val Royeaux to face execution.”

“Nice try. My employer is dead, and I don’t recall you paying me.”

“Not you, Qunari.” He sneers. “Cassandra?”

“‘Order me’? You are a glorified clerk, a bureaucrat!”

“And you are a thug, but a thug who supposedly serves the Chantry!”

“I served Justinia, not you.”

“Justinia is dead! We must elect a replacement, and obey her orders on the matter! And until that point in time we must detain the prisoner.”

The crowd shifts, a mass movement that unnerves Hawke and causes her to draw her stave. This only agitates them further.

“Get the apostate!”

“Hey! Hey now.” Adaar bellows, waving them down. “I don’t think your friends are interested in a trial, Chancellor. So how about you keep your thoughts to yourself for the moment. Wouldn’t want to lynch an innocent woman now, would we?”

“’That woman’,” Roderick hisses, tone seething with righteous indignation, “is our only suspect, and already responsible for the death of a Grand Cleric!”

“She is, however, our only hope for salvation,” Cassandra intercedes, “and you would do well to recognise that and call off your attack.”

“You have already caused enough trouble without resorting to this exercise in futility. Call a retreat, Seeker. Our position here is hopeless.”

Adaar grimaces and runs one hand across his face, tracing a scar that runs from the base of his left horn to his jawline across charcoal coloured skin in an angry, puckered pink ridge.

“He’s right about that. When I first got my men to secure this position there was only ten refugees trying to hold this location, and we’ve got well over fifty now. It’s getting hard to keep people in and demons out.”

“You’ve done well to guard them this far. May I ask what position you held in the Conclave?”

“Me? I was a grunt, but I know what you’re talking about. We’re the Valo-Kas, my boss signed a contract with the Knight-Commander to provide more muscle should the mages have got out of hand. Guy seemed to think the fact we’re Qunari would scare them, even when we told him we’re Vashoth. Something to do with Saarebas setting an example. If I’m honest the guy didn’t seem the type to negotiate, didn’t even want to talk to the Divine before the main Conclave. Of course she managed to talk him into it.”

“But you were not present during the blast?”

He shrugs noncommittally. “Me and the boss didn’t get on a lot. I may have, uh, over drank and overslept. By the time I was within five feet of the foot of the mountain it was on fire, and both of my bosses were dead. Which technically makes me leader of the Valo-Kas until we get five seconds to sort this shit out.”

“I had known it was too good to be true. So you know nothing about the blast?”

“Nope. Except for the fact that I’ve lost half my men trying to keep demons out of this pass, I told them to bring any refugees they could find to this hold point… But we won’t be able to hold out here for much longer.”

“You’ve done well, if you fall back to Haven we can help you.”

“And I take it you are capable of handling yourselves in the valley?”

“We will be fine.”

“You’re kind of a force of nature, aren’t you?

“When I need to be.”

“It’s impressive.”

“You flatter me.”

“I’m trying.” Shaking his head, Adaar turns back to the Chancellor and the still uneasy mob behind him. “You hear that? Everybody pick up anything that isn’t rooted to the ground and retreat to Haven. If you got a sword and can use it, defend the flanks. We’re going to go through the Valley.”

“May the Maker always watch over you.”

“And may you always walk in His light, Lady Seeker.”

They move slowly, a lumbering mass of bodies protected by only a handful of Valo-kas mercenaries and a few Templars. As they pass, the Templars spit at her. Most of the mercenaries simply nod. At the rear, the Chancellor has one last comment.

“You won’t survive long enough to reach the Temple, even with all your soldiers. Listen to me. Abandon this before more lives are lost!”

“We can stop this before it’s too late. We must get to the Temple.” 

“Then on your head be the consequences, Seeker.”

A tremor crosses the sky in a bolt of green, and the mark responds in kind. Gritting her teeth, Hawke turns to the Seeker.

“Whatever we do, we need to do it now.”

“We must wait for our forces and Commander Cullen…”

“We don’t even know where in the Valley he is, if he doesn’t arrive in the next few minutes I might not even make it to the Temple.”

“It is the quickest way.”

“A full frontal assault? Sounds like suicide to me.” Varric interjects.

“There is an old Chantry complex that runs through the mountains. We would not need the reinforcements, but we lost contact with an entire squad on that path. It is too risky.”

“Too risky! I get torn apart by demons now or I get torn apart by demons later –”

“Lady Seeker Cassandra!”

A scout wearing Inquisition colours staggers through the snow towards them, scarcely reaching the camp before he falls to his knees. His face is pallid, his breathing uneven as he fights past fatigue to deliver his message.

“Sister Leliana… she’s in the pass, trying to get to the Temple.”

“Then we follow her.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group make their way through some old ruins in the mountain pass, reminding Hawke of experiences she'd rather forget. The Rift at the foot of the Breach is closed.
> 
> tw; panic attacks

The firelight that flickers from the apex of her stave does little to illuminate the dim, dusty stone corridors that run through the heart of the Frostback Mountains. They seem to stretch on in never ending silence, cobbled together from flagstones and caverns and sheer force of will, and for the moment, there are no demons to break the portentous quiet.

Hawke grips her stave closer.

She doesn’t know where the endless, spiralling corridors lead, and neither does she care. Biting her lip, she forces herself to remain in the present, using the pain to prevent the tunnels from blurring into the Deep Roads.

Behind the doors are Darkspawn. Down the passages are Darkspawn. Soon they will hear scratching on stone, scuttling, the sound of nails being dragged along torn metal and tainted flesh. They cannot sleep, cannot rest, they have to keep moving through the darkness, they cannot stop –

She stops, and blinks hard.

They are in the Frostbacks, she tells herself, faced with demons rather than Darkspawn. Theirs is a darkness that has an end.

But the words don’t quite cut it with the shadows clustered teasingly about the dim flames of their torches, with nothing but darkness ahead and darkness behind. Her heart spikes sharply, and she is in Vimmark again. She doesn’t know whether to be grateful that it isn’t the Deep Roads.

The chill air creeps down her spine, caresses the hairs at the back of her neck until they stand on end, brings with it the whisper of voices and the sound of centuries old echoes. In the near distance, deepstalkers squeal and scatter in the pale shadows while wind hisses through disused locks. Then comes the scratching. It is always the scratching.

A constant grating, grinding –

And Varric is talking. The sound fights its way through her uncooperative thoughts to make itself heard, and at the brush of the present she tries to pull herself back together.

“ – isn’t that right, Hawke?”

Smiling tautly, she nods. Cassandra makes a sound of disgust. She has not been listening, Varric knows that, and that was not the point. Taking another, more forceful breath, she continues to walk. At least Varric is there, even if Anders is not.

Where the corridor ends, it spills out into a long, winding cavern carved by claws and crudely hewn tools. But the air is cooler there, more restless, and it calms her somewhat to think that the exit is not too far away. She is still busy trying to fix her thoughts on escaping the underground labyrinth when she stumbles, and trips over something on the floor.  
   
Cassandra catches her, hand grabbing at the back of her armour before she falls face first into the scant remains of a drake carcass.

Beneath the firelight, the bare black bones glisten, marking the outline of where the creature fell quite some time ago.  
   
"Does the Chantry know about this?" Varric queries.  
   
Hauling Hawke back to her feet, Cassandra sighs.

"After people were sent to investigate the disappearance of Brother Genitivi, we unearthed these catacombs along with the Temple. We had no idea that these creatures were here until more scholars joined the excavation."  
   
"Meaning what, exactly?" Hawke presses.  
   
"Meaning that until recently the Temple of Sacred Ashes was occupied by dragons."  
   
"You know, I couldn't make that sort of shit up."  
   
"Of course you could Varric. Only there’d be a few orgies, blood magic rituals, some cult or other…"  
   
"Nah. Too cliché."  
   
"I would not speak so soon."  
   
"You've got to be kidding me."  
   
"Sadly, I am not. Shortly after the Chantry begun work on restoring the Ashes, they say profane things were discovered in the passages around the Temple itself. The decision was made by Justinia to seal them away while the Temple was rebuilt, with the hope of opening them when the rest of the work was complete. By the time the Temple had been restored we were faced with the consequences of the Mage uprising, and all plans to unearth the ruins were abandoned."  
   
"This place... I wonder what dreams it holds? What events it has witnessed?" Solas notes, running his hand along an insignia still carved deeply into the cavern wall.  
   
"A lot of ones that end in screaming, I'll bet."  
   
"They say this is where the Hero of Ferelden battled through to discover a cure for the Arl of Redcliffe."

Legend told that during the Fereldan Blight she had sought a cure for the Arl, another victim of Loghain’s treachery. They said she had found Brother Genitivi’s notes on the Urn of Sacred Ashes, rumoured to cure any ailment, then followed them to where he was being held captive by a cult that occupied Haven. Then they said the usual generic rubbish – trials, righteousness, slaying a high dragon, etc.

Then she cured the Arl, ended the Blight, saved all of Ferelden. Yet all Hawke can think of her is that hot summer’s day in Lothering when the elf’s sword was levelled at her throat.  
   
"They say a lot of things about the Hero of Ferelden," she responds, the image of her red-gold hair glinting about her head like a ring of fire still firmly imprinted in her mind.

"We tried to contact her before you, Hawke. We had hoped that one of you would agree to be the Inquisitor, to help us bring peace in these troubled times."  
   
"Well, you got the wrong one."  
   
Cassandra snorts. "Of that I am aware."  
   
Lapsing back into silence, Hawke glances about the empty corridors, at the strange insignia scratched into stone, the old bloodstains on crumbling rock. They are old, but no telling how old. Perhaps in the years between the Blight and its discovery by the Chantry it was slowly abandoned, its inhabitants leaving in search of somewhere more hospitable to live. Or perhaps they stayed until the bitter end, when the Divine’s forces turned up on their doorstep and made them leave.

Perhaps they did not leave at all, and, like Vimmark, they remain in a few fragmented groups, clinging on to what little is left by those that came before. One thing is certain, however, and that is that there are no more dragons.

Carefully picking their way through dragonling bones, they are met by the Temple’s last inhabitants.

The wraiths hiss at the disturbance, darting about the wide cavern and illuminating the farthest corners with flecks of green. With a whistling cry, they fire flares at the group, and they are quick to return fire, effortlessly dispatching the spirits back to the Fade.

Without them, the cavern returns to silence, and the four of them climb out onto the mountainside and into the bitter air.

The wind has picked up since they entered the caves, howling about their ears, harassing the snow into sharp toothed flurries of ice. All that remains of the scouting party are a few limbs sticking out of the snow, a few red flecks staining the ice. The rest is buried, and against the fierce cold Hawke feels no desire to linger and disturb them.

“Leliana’s scouts,” shouts Cassandra above the shrieking of the wind. “I had hoped some of the others might have made it.”

“Let’s hope they did.”

“We must move quickly, before the Breach expands any further.”

“Agreed.”

Picking up the pace, they struggle through the hail of snow, pushing through the growing storm to the blaze of green light that burns through it. Dropping down a ladder, the wind stops abruptly, and the path to the Temple before them is clear. Or rather, the path to what little is left of the Temple.

The path of the wind has been broken by massive stone shards, parts of the Temple driven together at a heat that has fused them with parts of the Fade, forcing them outwards into huge ramparts of green and black rocks. Out of the storm, fires still linger at the edges, slowly burning away at what little remains.

Inside, twisted, charred corpses have been welded to the floor by the energy of the blast. They reach out of the floor, still screaming, still running, backs bent in some feeble attempt at self-preservation against a force they could not have hoped to have stopped. It is impossible to identify them, to even attempt to discern on what side of the war they served – Mage, Templar, mercenary, cleric – everything of note has been burnt away, leaving only their blackened remains.

And if she looks up, the hole in the Fade is near enough to swallow them whole. It shifts and contorts and distorts as the Breach flows out from it, spilling across the clouded sky and setting the air about them crackling with raw magic.

Everything hums with energy, sparks springing to life from the bare ground. Her whole body shakes with the force of it, in her palm the mark seems to sing with the force of a soprano.

“Nothing,” she breathes, “nothing can do this.”

Words spring to mind that she hasn’t used in years – unholy, profane, unnatural – words she thought she’d surrendered along with her belief in the Maker. But now she can see the Fade with her own two eyes, and her conviction threatens to fail.

“If enough magic is brought to bear, it is possible,” says Solas.

“But there are easier ways to make things explode, right?”

“That is true.”

“We will consider how this happened once the immediate danger is past.”

“Once the Breach is sealed.”

“This Rift was the first, and it is the key. Seal it, and perhaps we seal the Breach.”

Looking at Cassandra, she nods, and together they enter the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Immediately she is struck by the scent of lyrium. Frowning, she turns to Varric, and he shrugs.

“There were a lot of Templars here.”

The smell grows thicker as they continue through the wreckage, more acrid, and as it turns sour at the back of her throat she realises that she can hear whispering. It had crept, unnoticed, beneath the humming of the Fade and then steadily risen until she could ignore it no longer.

‘You think you can survive this? You won’t live long enough. The mark will kill you, or the Seeker of Truth will.’

A thousand tiny doubts, building up in her head since the moment she woke up, pour across her thoughts in a torrent. She has to kill the Seeker before Cassandra kills her. Then she has to run, to get to the other side of Thedas and hide, to escape the Chantry, to escape this –

She bites her tongue and snarls.

“There’s red lyrium.”

The doubts, the paranoia, the sensation of her mind slowly fracturing, eating away at itself until nothing but the bare bones of thought remain – and the scent of soured lyrium – means there can only be one culprit.

As she looks, she can see the veins of it coursing through the rock, pulsing like blighted blood in the black stone. In places, it erupts through the floor in shards mimicking the ruins, forming bloated red protrusions that glisten with an agitated heat. Across her mind, the haze reaches out and tugs at her memories, poking and probing and unsettling every image she ever wanted to put to rest.

Bethany, back broken –

Growling, she lashes out and shatters the nearest shard.

“We need to keep moving.”

As they approach the stairs, another voice rings out. Above the whispers and the hums and the low thundering of a brewing storm, a familiar voice replays the last memories of the warped rubble.

_Now is the hour of our victory. Bring forth the sacrifice._

“What are we hearing?”

“That’s… that’s not possible. He’s dead.”

“Who’s dead, Hawke?”

_Keep the sacrifice still._

_What? I did not agree to this, creature –_

A grunt, and the Orlesian voice falls silent. But Hawke’s mind is still on the first speaker, the familiar, guttural commands of a figure that should be dead, that has to be dead. Gripping her stave she breaks out into a run.

There are other voices, other things said, her own last words echoing through the remains of the Temple. But none of those other things matter, because she has to see for her herself, has to confirm with her own two eyes that she is not going mad, that the Archdemon Magister she slew in Vimmark is still alive.

Hurtling through the Temple, she ignores the burning in her limbs and the burning of her lungs as she springs over the stone railings and down the stairs into the pit. What was once the Ceremonial Chambers, the seat of the very Conclave itself, has become a hole in the ground and the seat of the Breach itself.

Above her, memories still suspended on floors that have since been reduced to ash and dust, play out one last scene.

She is holding something, an orb, maybe? Her face is written with agony as it brands itself , burning through onto the skin of her palm, fusing it with her flesh. Around her are figures only half-formed by the whispers of lyrium and Fade, already almost forgotten. Except one, surrounded by shadows yet blazing with the intensity of the sun –

The arrow strikes at the heart of the Rift, and it rips itself apart. Within seconds the scene is torn asunder as the Fade rushes out in a pulse of green, knocking her off her feet.

“Hawke!”

“I’m alright, Varric!”

From the wisps of the Fade, a Pride Demon grows, chuckling. She is forced to rethink her assessment.

Grabbing her stave she casts a ring of fire, surrounding the creature in a halo of flames. Staggering back, she raises it over her head and follows the spell out with a flurry of fireballs. From behind her, a hail of arrows rain onto the creature, accompanied by a spurt of ice that sticks to the demon’s skin, slowing it.

Leaping through the flames, Cassandra gives a shout as she buries her sword into its leg. With a deadly precision, an arrow strikes it in the eye, and it roars, falling to its knees.

Leliana stands on the balustrade, bow in hand. A few minutes later and they are joined by scouts, soldiers, Cullen charging down the stairs and into the fray. Against the forces arrayed against it, it quickly succumbs, dissipating back to the Fade.

“Now! Seal the Rift!”

Raising her hand, she lets the mark flare. Her last thought before she passes out is disbelief.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awakening in Haven, Hawke and Varric discuss her capture and flight from the Free Marches. Deciding to stay, Hawke faces Roderick's fury in the Chantry. Cassandra establishes the Inquisition. Leliana, Josephine, Cullen, Cassandra, Trevelyan and Hawke discuss how to proceed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, the story emerges from the murky depths of The Wrath of Heaven/The Threat Remains... And into the big bad world of the rest of the plot. So strap in for a wild ride of:  
> \- A million fetch-quests condensed into something someone might plausibly do!  
> \- Old characters!/New characters!/Own characters!  
> \- Canon dialogue and scenes intermingled with jiggery pokery and new content!  
> \- Sarcasm!  
> While I attempt to convert a behemoth of a plot into something actually readable. Early chapters may be edited as the story progresses and I realise how curmudgeonly they are, or left as cautionary tales of what happens when you stuff too much filling in a sandwich (honestly, I planned the Wrath of Heaven as one chapter and it 's embarrassing how wrong I was).  
> To any end, I hope you enjoy reading!

She wakes up slowly, in stumbling, grumbling fits and starts that are as unfamiliar to her as her surroundings and the warmth of thick woollen bedsheets. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she pushes herself upright. Groggy hands reach for the stave that should be her side, and clamp around the comforting wood.

Her room is not a cell. She is not a prisoner. Or, at the very least, she is no longer the same sort of prisoner. The steel cuffs and iron chains have disappeared, it remains to be seen what they have been replaced with.

"And here I was starting to think I would have to get Cassandra to shake you awake. You missed the welcome party."

"How long was I out, Varric?"

"Three days."

She nods groggily, and the weight of her head and her limbs agrees with his assessment. Then her stomach snarls, and her thoughts turn to more pressing matters.

“Breakfast?”

“As if I would let you wake up without one.”

The egg is cold, and guilt stirs in the pit of her stomach along with starvation as she wonders if Varric made her breakfast every morning she was passed out, in some vain hope that she’d smell it and wake up. Shoveling it in with her hands, the glint of the mark catches her eye again.

It is not silent, but quieter by far than when she’d fought through the pass thrumming softly with its unknown magic. At the touch of her thoughts, it stirs slightly, as a cat might purr in its sleep. For now, at least, it remains dormant while she licks the yolk off her fingers.

“Where are we?”

“Haven. It’s growing on me, you know?”

With a snort, she continues to demolish her breakfast. It’s more than she could’ve asked for in recent weeks, the warm bed, the filling food, the deceptively cozy confines of a room meant to hold people rather than prisoners. It’s also reassuring that the Seeker went to the effort of carrying her down the mountain, rather simply leaving her to die at the top.

“So,” Varric ventures, “is he innocent?”

“Not enough for Cassandra.”

“Should’ve spun a story. It’s more believable, and less prone to result in premature execution.”

“Like you did?”

“I told the Seeker everything that seemed important at the time. What I don’t understand is how she found you and Blondie.”

Hawke’s face twists into a grimace.

“I used Corff to smuggle information in and out of Kirkwall. When he told me you had been captured I cut him off and headed east along the Wounded Coast. We were near the Nevarran border when we heard word of the Conclave. We had a disagreement.”

Such was the way of things. They had always disagreed, always argued, wasted words against one another until their bodies ended up against one another, their lips engaged in more fruitful pursuits. The Chantry explosion had changed nothing. If anything, it had only made them worse.

“Anders wanted to go. He said that he had to take responsibility, to face the Conclave and explain what he had done, everything he had done, was for the plight of the mages. Justice,” she spits out the word like filth, “is the only thing that matters.”

And Justice had had something to say about it too, ending any chances of reconciliation.

“I told him that the mages didn’t want his help.”

“I take it that he didn’t take that too well.”

“He didn’t take it at all. So I told Justice that going to the Conclave would get us both killed, that I wouldn’t let Anders endanger himself in that way. When the dust cleared neither of us had won.”

It had been a hard fight, less a test of strength and more a battle of wills, trying to face off with the spirit possessing Anders without hurting her lover. It had ended with Justice’s hands around her throat and her knife levelled at his chest, each threatening something neither would go through with.

She would not kill Anders to dispel Justice, and Anders would not let Justice kill her. They had broken apart when the spirit’s control slipped. Anders’ eyes had been alight with horror, hers with resignation. He said he would not pursue the issue of the Conclave, she knew that he planned to leave.

“I knew he would go with or without me, so I agreed to come with him. I couldn’t – I refused to let him kill himself. Imagine Anders trying to walk into the Conclave and explain himself to the Divine.”

“I’m pretty sure her head might have exploded.”

“Along with most of the Clerics and a few dozen Templars.” She jibes, before remembering that, give or take a few hundred more, that is exactly what happened. “I mean, I planned to leave him with Aveline in Kirkwall –”

“That was your plan?”

“I never said it was a good one. All I knew was that I needed some place where he wouldn’t endanger anyone, most of all himself. Then I would lead the Seeker away…”

“And be captured, escape, then fall out of the Fade with that thing on your hand. I’m glad you cleared that one up for me.”

“I had guessed that whoever was pursuing us might reasonably expect us to attend the Conclave, I didn’t know that the Seeker was on the next boat out of Kirkwall. I was scarcely out of Jader when she caught up with me.”

“You mean to tell me you left Blondie in the Free Marches, alone?”

“I hope so.”

Hope, she is aware, will only carry her so far, particularly when her own doubts threaten to undo it. But the voice that had echoed in the Temple ruins has given her hope, even if the notion that Corypheus survived his death in the Vimmark Mountains concerns her.

“Besides, you heard the voice in the Temple. It was Corypheus who destroyed the Conclave.”

Corypheus, who could control Grey Wardens. Corypheus, who was last seen dead while she, Varric, Carver and Anders pondered what to do with the body.

She had thrown it back into the prison shaft, sent word to Weisshaupt and spent the next three years pretending like it had never happened. It was easy to pretend when no one else knew nor cared about an abandoned Warden Prison and a Darkspawn Magister, when Meredith was slaughtering innocent mages and running the city of Kirkwall into the ground.

After the Chantry explosion and the Mage Uprising, the incident in Vimmark had, apart from the occasional, lingering nightmares, slipped her mind almost entirely. It is the only story Varric tells that even she struggles to see herself in.

The rest – Arishok fights, High Dragons, a former First-Enchanter composed of corpses – are at least relatable to her, no matter how unbelievable they are to everyone else. Now she has to add falling out of the Fade and sealing the Breach to that list.

But Corypheus is a problem for the Grey Wardens, not her. She still has a whole continent to run away from.

"You think so?"

"You heard the voices Varric. It could only be him."

"Well, shit. Didn't we kill him already?"

"There were Seven Magisters."

"So it could be another homicidal idiot, or just one we've killed before. That makes me feel so much better."

She shrugs. "The Wardens sealed him away before, they can do it again. This is their problem. I already sealed the Breach, I've done what they asked."

"Ah. About that..."

"What?"

An elven servant bursts through the door, humming blithely. Instinct propels Hawke to hold her stave up, fire quickly forming around the whorls of wood. With a shriek, the servant drops to her knees, and Varric signals to Hawke to sheathe her weapon. Reluctantly, and somewhat embarrassed, she puts it down.

On the ground in front of her, head bowed in prostration, the elf prays. Scant words reach Hawke's ears - 'Herald', 'Chosen of Andraste', 'light of the Maker'. She glares at Varric, half expecting him to explain the joke, reveal the rumour, tell a story. Instead, he is silent. Well, for a moment at least. Then he intervenes for all their sakes.

“You know how much you enjoy being the centre of attention.”

“Spit it out, Varric.”

“So the good news is the Breach has stopped growing, along with whatever that thing is on your hand, the bad news is –”

“I didn’t seal it.”

“Apparently, this is the part where you save the world again.”

She shuts her eyes, in the vain hope that when she opens them she is back in some shack on the Wounded Coast, hiding from Templars rather than being told she somehow has to save the world. Even Kirkwall was better, everything happened so fast there was no time for decisions, only actions.

“Why me though?”

“They say you were chosen, my Lady Herald,” blurts out the elf. “They say that Andraste herself delivered you from the Fade to save us all, that you were chosen by the Maker as his messenger.”

“Of course they do.”

“Hey, don’t pin this one on me.”

“I suppose not. It’s not your style.”

The elf is still praying, her lips moving quickly but silently as she cowers at Hawke’s feet. It makes her uneasy, and she retreats slightly, raising her hands in a placating gesture.

“You can stand up.”

“And you have my thanks, my Lady Herald.” Even as she returns to her feet, her head remains bowed in deference as she speaks. “I’m certain Lady Cassandra would want to know you’ve wakened. She’s in the Chantry, with the Chancellor. She said, ‘at once’.”

The servant fidgets momentarily, uncertain, torn between the respect she has to show the orders she has been given and the respect she wants to show the woman in front of her. Varric shakes his head, prodding Hawke to the correct response.

“Why don’t you tell her then?”

As she dips her head one last time before hurrying out the door, Varric tsks.

“And they made you Champion of Kirkwall.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I guess there’s no rules saying that the Champion has to be a people person.”

“You take that back! You know they made me give a speech when they forced me to accept that title.”

He chuckles. “You should’ve seen the Bran Cavin’s face after you’d finished, it was a picture.”

“So do I have to make one for being the Chosen of Andraste?”

“I think ‘Herald of Andraste’ is the one that stuck. And as far as I can tell, no. You might want to talk to the Seeker though.”

“Fine.”

Sighing, she begins to change out of the nightclothes someone managed to wrestle her into and into some loose fitting mercenary armour. Someone has left Circle robes in a neatly folded pile near the foot of her bed, along with a note written in neat print. She dumps the note on the nearest torch and shoves the robes on the nearest shelf.

As she changes, she tries to ignore the way her ribs are dangerously close to her skin, the bright purple and blue bruises that are scattered across older brown ones like autumnal leaves – the small, neat white scar at the apex of her left thigh from repeated incisions.

Beneath the armour, none of those things are visible, and Hawke can almost convince herself that they’re not there, unlike the storm that waits for her outside.

Taking a deep breath, she tries to steel herself against the tension building up in her heart. Somehow, the idea of walking into the Haven Chantry terrifies her.

She does not fear the Seeker, or the former Knight-Captain, or even Sister Nightingale. She knows that if she walks into the Chantry they will not turn on her. They did not take her down the mountain for the pleasure of executing her at the base, of that much she is certain.

If she’s honest with herself, she does not even fear what others say about her, the titles they bandy about in hushed whispers with averted eyes and shaking hands.

What scares her is the responsibility. She knows that if she walks into the Haven Chantry, she will be expected to somehow stop the world from ending, to achieve the impossible – and she has to do it, because she’s Hawke.

Once she’d argued with Carver, when he’d bemoaned the fact that she’d somehow taken the family name. They’d fought bitterly, but how could she explain to him the weight it held around her neck, the terrible gravity of it all? Now even on Varric and Anders’ lips it sounds slightly wrong, because it is no longer a name, it is a title, and it is a promise.

She remembers the mages huddled in the Gallows watching her with wary reverence, believing she could stop the inevitable, that somehow there was some way she could stop Meredith, stop the madness, stop the city burning, and make everything right again. Because she was Hawke, they suddenly expected the unattainable.

The problem is that she expects it too.

Fingertips fluttering, she sheathes her stave on her back and prepares to walk out of the door, for good or for ill. She can run to the other side of Thedas, find Anders, spend the rest of her life hunted but free. Or she can walk into the Chantry, and attempt the impossible.

“Varric?”

“Hm?”

“What would you do if I ran?”

The pause before he speaks betrays him. “I’d take out the archers.”

Swallowing, she opens the door and steps out into the sunlight.

It is bright, the light playing across the winter snow that still covers the mountain village almost blinds her. Above, sure enough, the Breach still colours the blue sky with streaks of pale green, but it is less of a storm and more like scum on still waters, slowly tainting the air about it.

Around the path, a crowd has already begun to form. They are farmers, villagers, Templars, clerics, Qunari mercenaries and Circle Mages, all watching her with tentative gazes. As she stumbles towards the Chantry, movements still clumsy with sleep, a wave of whispers passes through them, her name on a hundred lips at once. They say the same thing.

_‘That’s her, that’s the Herald of Andraste.’_

_‘They say she’s the one who stopped the Breach from getting any bigger.’_

“You know, I knew should’ve waited before going to the publishers with the ‘Tale of a Champion’.”

A few place their hands over their hearts in fists like a salute, others shake their heads, a few pray. But none of them stop them, at least until they reach a smaller crowd assembled in front of the doors of the Chantry.

“Champion!” Harassing the crowd aside, Luise Trevelyan meets them with a smile that could melt lyrium as she ushers them into the Chantry itself.

The building is old, far older than any Chantry Hawke has ever set foot in, stones and timbers alike wearied by the years of carrying the weight of the roof. It smells like dust, thick dust, slight damp and candle smoke. There is no statuary of Andraste, only faint wall carvings and recently added paintings, along with an alcove where the Qunari mercenary appears deep in prayer.

A stone slab nearby details the names of the Chantry Mothers, of which there are a grand total of two. She strongly suspects it is a far more recent addition.

“I must congratulate you on your work sealing the Rift, it was most timely. But, I fear you are a little short for a heretic,” Luise giggles.

“What?”

“Lady Seeker Cassandra would have been here to greet you, but she has been detained by the Chancellor. He is most insistent that you be returned to Val Royeaux for execution.”

“Even after I sealed the Rift?”

“Oh, I doubt it is that that concerns him most at the moment.”

As they near the door at the end of the corridor, the sound of raised voices grows louder, clearer, and Hawke grows angrier. Luise goes to knock on the heavy set wooden door, Hawke simply opens it and announces herself a lot more unceremoniously.

“For all you know she intended it that – Chain her! I want her prepared to travel to the Capital for trial.”

Four people stand behind a repurposed altar that dominates the centre of the room, of which she recognises three. Between Sister Nightingale and Cullen stands a woman that Hawke cannot place, and who is the first to rebut the Chancellor’s raving.

“Let’s not be too hasty –”

“Have you gone completely mad? She should be taken to Val Royeaux immediately, to be tried by whomever becomes Divine!”

“Which could take months. Time we simply do not have,” adds Cullen.

“Such is tradition, Knight-Commander. It is our duty to follow what centuries of tradition dictates, not to blindly ignore what has built the Chantry. Your duty is to serve the Chantry, or have you forgotten that?”

“Our duty is to serve the principles on which the Chantry was founded, Chancellor. The Breach is stable, but still a threat. We will not ignore it.”

“Whatever she has done, she is not responsible for the explosion at the Conclave,” interjects Leliana.

“That is beside the point, even if I were to believe this vision of yours, she is still responsible for the murder of a Grand Cleric, the entire basis of the Mage Rebellion!”

“I do not say this lightly, but we need her. While the Breach remains, her mark is the only hope we have of closing it. If this is the Will of the Maker, she was the one sent to help us in our darkest hour.”

Roderick’s expression darkens. “You walk a dangerous line, Seeker.”

“No. I am simply doing what must be done, I refuse to stand in the fire and complain that it is hot.” Irritably, she shoves a heft tome emblazoned with a burning eye across the table at the Chancellor. “You know what this is, Chancellor, a writ from the Divine, granting us authority to act. As of this moment, I declare the Inquisition reborn. We will close the Breach, we will find those responsible and we will restore order, with or without your approval.”

“You can’t simply –”

“The Breach is our priority, Chancellor. It should be yours too.”

Fuming, the Chancellor storms out, practically bowling Luise over in his hurry to get through the door. She simply takes it in her stride, brushing the Chancellor’s fumes off of her robes.

“That is why I always knock. It is so much less awkward than walking into an argument halfway through.”

“Noted,” Hawke growls, before turning back to the people on the opposite side of the table. “So. I take it I’m still a suspect?”

Leliana shakes her head. “I saw the vision in the Temple. The Divine called to you for help in her final moments. But I could not see who –“

“Corypheus. He’s a Darkspawn that thinks he’s a Magister. Varric and I fought him in a Warden prison in the Vimmark Mountains where he’d been kept. We thought we’d killed him.”

Confusion passes across their faces, along with scepticism. They do not believe, and she highly doubts that they would even want to believe, that an ancient creature was responsible for the destruction of the Conclave. But she knows what she heard, and she knows that the voice in the Temple was Corypheus.

“A Magister? As in the kind that started the Blights?”

“You can’t be serious –“

“Because Andraste guiding me out of the Fade is so much more reasonable, Cullen?”

A silence descends, as all seven of them try to find the words to voice what they’re trying to say. Of late, it appears that the right vocabulary is in short supply. Finally, Cassandra speaks.

“This is not how I imagined declaring the Inquisition. I had hoped you would agree to lead us, but now I am not so sure. But I was wrong before, perhaps I still am. And I will not pretend you were not exactly what we needed, when we needed it. We will close the Breach, then we will investigate your claims.”

“Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave, someone most Holy did not expect. If this Darkspawn Magister was there, we must find out how he managed to get close to her, how he avoided detection, if he still lives.”

“If he is I’ll reduce him to ashes myself.”

“So you’re staying?” Cullen’s tone is disbelieving, antagonistic, and were the other five not there she would’ve been tempted to remind him of exactly where he stood while Kirkwall burned.

“We’ll see how this goes.”

“That is all we ask. We will rebuild the Inquisition of old, find those who stand against the chaos and unite them under a single banner once more. We have no numbers, and now no Chantry support.”

“We have a leader,” the third woman ventures tentatively.

“I suppose that much is true. We are here, even if we no longer have a choice: we must act now. Hawke, you have already met Commander Cullen and Leliana, leader of our forces and our spymaster. This is Lady Josephine Montilyet, our Ambassador.”

Josephine dips her head. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Champion.”

“I mentioned that we looked for you and the Hero of Ferelden to lead this Inquisition, when Divine Justinia hoped it might be used to bring an end to the Mage-Templar conflict should the Conclave fail. Now it seems we must find a way of closing the Breach. You’ve given us some time – and Solas believes a second attempt at closing it might succeed – provided the mark has the same level of power used to open the Breach in the first place. That is not easy to come by.”

“Clearly you have something in mind.”

“We did,” Cullen grimaces. “Unfortunately our chances of working with the Templar Order are slim. Your actions in Kirkwall mean that most of the remaining Knight-Commanders view you as a threat, and you take most of the blame for causing the Mage Rebellion.”

“The same is true of the Rebellion. While there are those who remember how you stood up for us in Kirkwall, this war has been going on too long. Many would see you to blame for a situation that has cost us all so dearly,” Luise chimes in sombrely.

"Suffice to say, neither group will even speak to us. Not without reason. To make things worse, Chancellor Roderick has already sent word to the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux. The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition, and you specifically.”

“What is it this time?”

“Some are calling you the ‘Herald of Andraste’, claiming you were sent by the Maker. That frightens the Chantry. What few clerics remain have declared it blasphemy, and we heretics for harbouring you.”

“Nothing new then?”

“It may, uh, limit our options.”

“Definitely nothing new.”

“People are desperate for a sign of hope. For some, you are that sign.”

“And to others, a symbol of everything that has gone wrong.”

“It’s never stopped me before.”

“Before you were a renegade apostate on the streets of Kirkwall. I fear the rest of Thedas will not be so forgiving.”

“Seeker, if you spent any time at all in Kirkwall then you would already know how unforgiving it is.”

“So far the Chantry’s attacks have been disorganised, but we cannot afford to let them close ranks against us.”

“And what will they attack us with? Words?”

“They may bury us with them, Commander. The Anderfels, the Free Marches, Nevarra, Antiva, Rivain, Orlais, Ferelden and even Tevinter are united by the presence of the Chantry. If the clerics elect a Divine unsympathetic to our cause, it would be easy for them to leverage these connections and end the Inquisition before it has a chance.”

“And why would they care?”

Josephine’s quill quivers as she sighs. “For almost a thousand years the Chantry has been relatively unified in opinion. With the exception of the Imperial Chantry and the Qun it faces relatively little opposition, your presence threatens to change that.”

“It’s only been three days.”

“It has not been long enough for people to change their minds, but long enough for them to doubt.”

“Your influence in the Free Marches means that you are already seen as a figure, from there to the ‘Herald’ is a relatively short step.”

“So long as the cults remain small, the Chantry will not feel threatened. But at a time when it is already so divided and many doubt its strength, it would not take much to unsettle many of the clerics.” Leliana explains. “We need allies against their outrage, to prove to them that we are not heretics to be feared. A Chantry cleric by the name of mother Giselle has asked to speak with you. She is not far, and knows those involved far better than I. Her assistance could be invaluable.”

“Or she could cart me straight off to Val Royeaux.”

“I hear she is a kind soul, not one for violence or subterfuge. She is tending to the wounded in the Hinterlands near Redcliffe.”

“And there is another,” notes Josephine, “a Sister in Starkhaven contacted us. She claims to be trying to reform the Chantry after what happened in Kirkwall. She could be useful in trying to contact the other groups, to prevent them from getting out of hand.”

“Or she could be a raving lunatic,” rebuts Cullen. “I say we should establish an initial presence in the Hinterlands. The infighting between Mages and Templars has devastated the area, and if the Inquisition wants to prove its commitment to establishing order there’s no better place to start.”

“Do you want to add anything else to that list? Close the Breach, stop Corypheus, restore order, calm the Chantry… I haven’t even had lunch.”

Which is good, because she feels like she might just throw up.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has been a long time coming, mostly because I tried to push through with something I wasn't happy with and ended rewriting and downsizing it. Honestly this sets up some things and doesn't go very far. My sincerest apology for the length of time between this one and the last few, fingers crossed for me not falling out so badly with the next chapter.
> 
> Introducing everyone's favourite place: the Hinterlands
> 
> Hawke defrosts a little. Doubting herself over the nature of Corypheus. Barham makes a brief return. A mysterious stranger comes to their aid. Hawke and Harding discuss Redcliffe's fate.

5.

Varric has a seven-point scale of crazy he keeps when he thinks Hawke isn’t looking, which would’ve been fine if she hadn’t found it six years ago when she’d been passed out drunk in the Hanged Man. She’d woken up face down on his desk with a note about it stuck to her face. As they descend the narrow winter pilgrimage path that leads out of the Frostback Mountains, she considers suggesting to him that he might need to add an eight, or maybe a nine.

An eight - because agreeing to play target practice and convenient scapegoat for most of Thedas somehow makes Kirkwall look reasonably well thought out, or at least not completely insane. A nine - because she isn’t so sure that bluster and bravado and sheer bloody-mindedness will be able to see it through this time.

In the half a week it took them to navigate the icy cobbles to the smallest eastern foothill of the Frostbacks, she considered going mad at least twice, trying to keep her head down and away from the nauseating glow of the Breach. Not running though - if she tried to run it would just give Varric something to laugh at when she fell off of the old plough nag the Inquisition had put her on. Although some days, she’s not entirely certain the mare will make it much further at a walking pace.

Roughly a week’s ride from Redcliffe they set up camp to rest the horses. The air is clearer, the sky bluer, and Hawke’s fingers feel less likely to freeze beneath her finger wraps. It’s a brisk south Fereldan spring in the lowlands, and the sharp grasses smell with a familiar sweetness.

As they settle for the remainder of the day, she runs her idle hands over the fragile first blooms and remembers Lothering. It’s so long ago she almost catches herself smiling. Then her nag shakes herself irritably at the wait, and Hawke remembers to at least scowl a little as she ties her to the makeshift post before sitting down.

“Careful there Hawke,” Varric teases. “You almost defrosted a little.”

“It is the season.”

“Don’t tell me about it. You know I think I’ve got hay fever, all this grass and fresh air.”

After adding the finishing touches to their camp, Cassandra approaches, one eyebrow raised.

“Is that the reason you have been sniffing in my ear, Varric? I thought you’d developed a cold.”

Hawke smiles, just a little.

“No. He’s just allergic to the countryside. Don’t see it often enough in Kirkwall.”

“He tells me that you did used to leave the city.”

“Under duress, Seeker! As if I would ever willingly walk up Sundermont.”

“Would anyone?”

“I hear that the area is home to many elven ruins. Someone must have found the journey worthwhile.”

“Oh sure, there are ruins, dragons, varterrals…”

At the mention of Varterrals, Solas perks up, and Hawke half laughs, shaking her head.

“Varric can tell you. He tells the stories better than I do.”

“You were there too, were you not?”

Beneath the elf’s prying gaze, her mood begins to sour.

“Sure. My delivery’s just not as good.”

Standing back up, she tightens the knot around the post and wanders to the perimeter, where a small brook carves along the edge of the camp. Upstream, a ram watches her briefly before drinking, content she is not a threat. In the distance, a few fennec chase each other through wheat coloured grass, yelping shrilly.

Here there are no demons, no Qunari, no Templars, and the world is suffused with a gentle calm. She doesn’t need the green glow over her shoulder to remind her of how fragile it all is, just like she doesn’t need to remember Kirkwall to be able to guess how quickly it will all go to shit.

Corypheus hadn’t seemed that dangerous - mad, yes - confused, yes - spouting some lines about the Old Gods and ruling the world that she’s certain she’d read once in a Chantry pamphlet about Tevinter. But he’d never seemed that much of a threat. Against the Arishok, Meredith, even Petrice, he’d lacked purpose. He had been powerful, sure, but motionless. A boulder itself isn’t a threat until it gains traction going downhill.

But even then, he should be dead. She thought he was dead, as did Varric, Anders and even Carver. It had been a rare point of agreement for the four of them.

Watching the horizon, she plays the voice in the Temple back in her head. It had been higher, perhaps sharper, than she had remembered, but it had been unmistakably Corypheus’. Her stomach twists slightly, and she scratches at her palm. What if it wasn’t Corypheus, if she had led them all into thinking they were dealing with something they weren’t? But more importantly, what if it was?

She shivers. Hopefully the next time he dies the Maker will have the good grace not to return him.

As the sun slowly turns to gold, then amber, she continues to watch the perimeter, grateful that the tussling grass is less turbulent than her thoughts. No one intervenes or interrupts, too wise or too wary to break her concentration. At least not until late afternoon, when she hears the telltale swish of feet and staff parting grass.

“I’m fine.”

“Cassandra and I were wondering if you wished to rest. I would be happy to assume your watch.”

“I said: I’m fine.”

“You’re frustrated.”

“Aren’t you?” She snaps. “We could be up against anyone, anything, and we’re marching off to Redcliffe to kiss some old cleric’s feet and hope the Chantry backs off. It’s a waste of time.”

Solar sighs. “Preparation, I find, is seldom a waste of time.”

“Do you know why I never tell people about Kirkwall? Chances are they already know, already think they know. They usually have some idea of what they might’ve done in my shoes, tell me it was inevitable, that I must’ve seen it coming.” Her hands begin to shake, and without the comfort of her staff she reaches for her legs. “I watched Kirkwall burn - twice - Solas, and neither time could I have done anything to stop it. No preparation, nothing.”

“Maybe there was nothing you could’ve done for those particular instances, but you knew what you would do if things went wrong. Your initial escape from the Chantry reveals that much. And that, Herald, is where I find preparation is most effective.”

“So you’re telling me to ride this one out patiently?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“And in another - wait. Don’t answer that. Tell Cassandra she can relieve me before dinner. Wouldn’t want her to think I had any ideas still.”

“Very well.”

She listens to him leave, and realises that she can count four paces before his footsteps become indistinguishable from the whisper of leaves. Groaning, she admits fatigue and defeat, and allows Cassandra to replace her on watch duty for the remainder of the evening.

It’s a wise decision when they head off early the next morning, hurrying to make up for daylight lost on the day before. The ride sets the tone for the rest of the trip, and by the sixth day Hawke’s certain that she would be happy if she never had to sit down again. It doesn’t help that they’re forced to add time, giving a wide berth to the devastation plaguing the King’s Road and taking the southern highways. Not that they are much better.

Years ago, even the worst kind of bandits on the south road could be scared away with a stave or a well held sword. They had been the opportunistic kind, forced out of more lucrative areas by their stronger peers and the Arl’s men, not the kind looking for a fight. People like Barham had paid the tithe, while Hawke had simply stood her ground and glared at them until they found someone easier to pick on.

Bethany had always been impressed, and Carver had been until he turned sixteen. And every year until the one before the Blight they had trekked the same southern road north from Lothering to Redcliffe for the Satinalia festival clutching each others’ hands.

The road had been more even then, too. Now it is pockmarked by steel feet and old fireball craters in equal measure, mud bowed beneath the weight of marching armies and stones still bearing the faint scratch marks of darkspawn. Even the trees around it are stunted, twisted, struggling against a blackness that continues to seep through the loamy soil. She can almost swear that the air is colder too, warming only marginally as they press northwards out of the worst of the tainted land. If this is the southern road, she shudders to think of what happened to Lothering.

Some of them must have survived, must have managed to pick their things up and run before the horde arrived. It’s been over ten years now, someone must have tried to rebuild.

Beneath the horses’ hooves, bone bleached taint soil cracks. Lothering was a farm town, and the Blight has picked the dirt clean. She doubts that there would be anything worth rebuilding, even if people did.

Although there is someone else on the south road - a farmer - his back hunched with the weight of pulling along his small cart. He is making a slow pace, and on horseback they are soon draw alongside him.

His head is dirty, bowed, weathered and weary from sun and hard work, and even as they make their way past he does not look up. But Hawke does, her eyes running along the faded paintwork and catching on terracotta jars and faded linens. Jars from Orzammar for a gold, linens for three silvers, a sword for one and a bronze and three measly eggs for seven bronze bits…

“Barham?”

He looks up, bewildered, and she almost doesn’t believe it. Not that he’s alive, and certainly not that he’s still walking the route to Lothering. His eyes meet hers and widen.

“You should be dead.”

“So should you.”

“No. No. I _saw_ the horde follow you. I watched them with my own two eyes.” He glances around in panic, and when he doesn’t see any other Hawke with them he laughs shrilly. “You killed them, didn’t you? Always knew you were -“

There’s a fireball at the end of her stave and a murderous glint in her eyes before he can finish that sentence, and he thinks better of it.

“Go on. Say it.”

Her breath grows tighter in her chest with every second he watches her, weighing up his options. Finally, he breaks.

“Get away from me! Get away!”

Breaking into a sprint, he abandons what little wares he has and makes for the hunting footpaths. He is over the hill when Hawke lifts her staff and brings it crashing down onto the stand. Under the force it cracks so hard the wheels beneath it splinter into the soil. Terracotta fragments shoot out into the short grass. Still shaking, she forces herself to sheathe her stave.

Varric is the only one brave enough to break the silence.

“You know that guy?”

“I wish I didn’t. We need to get going.”

Spurring her horse on, she pulls them off at an easy canter northwards. They need to get to the Chantry Mother, they need to stop Corypheus, they need… Her knuckles turn white against the reins as she leans into the stride. They need to get there faster.

A shout from the trees startles her reverie.

Bandits pour out from either side. The tripwire snaps and branches collapse in front of them. Her horse rears and her heart starts as blood rushes through her chest. It’s an ambush. There’s five of them - two archers, three swordsmen - rounding on her as the nag whinnies and shakes, startled.

As she reaches behind her back an arrow whistles past her shoulder. It buries itself in the shoulder of the furthest archer, and he cries out. The noise startles his fellows for long enough that Hawke can send a burst of lightning between them, desperately trying to control her horse as the men writhe in pain.

A second arrow strikes the wounded man through the eye, and a further two dispatch of the other archer. There’s a shout as Cassandra enters the clearing, a slight thud as Varric dismounts and the sweet click and whistle of Bianca as he fells another man. Cassandra cuts down the last two, and they convene in the centre of the clearing, breathing quick but light.

“There is a reason we weren’t galloping Hawke.”

“Too late.”

Cassandra grunts, and Hawke chooses to ignore her.

“Thanks for the help Varric.”

“No problem. But those weren’t me.”

“No,” a low, gentle voice echoes from the tree line. “They would be mine.”

The scout is sitting in the nearest ash, and dismounts with ease, clasping his hand to his chest in salute. He is an elf, short, lithe, with dark brown skin and dark brown eyes, his long black hair falling in a plait down his back. His left arm ends in a simple metal hook.

“Herald. My Lady Seeker.”

“Are you one of Leliana’s men?”

“I am indeed. The camp is not far from here.”

“You’re assistance was most timely.”

“They are just scavengers my Lady, picking off those who come to help the refugees here. They’re better armed and better trained than most, but nothing that the Inquisitions forced cannot handle.” He cocks his head, and Hawke can feel him appraising her. “Scout Harding is anxious to see you. The least I can do is see you reach her safely.”

Dismounting, they approach the camp on foot. As they draw closer, scouts materialise from the bushes and trees around them, lowering their bows and dipping their heads in respect. Once they are near enough, a few rush forward to lead their horses to a makeshift paddock. She barely notices their guide vanish back into the bushes.

The camp itself lies in a small outcropping above the crossroads, nestled between trees and rocky projections that shield it from attack from the north and east. On the west, a sharp slope separates it from a small path that carves a sharp trail through the hills down to the Kings Road itself, leaving only the two trails that wind into the clearing from the south. Their position is defensible, but not impenetrable, as the small detachment of soldiers attests to.

There are only a few of them, already sporting bruises and bandages and bloodstains on their armour, watching them with eyes that have become too accustomed to staying open. Unlike the pilgrims at Haven, they do not mutter, and unlike the refugees, they do not pray. Instead, they watch them pass with quiet salutes and measured gazes as they walk through to where a dwarf stands gazing out at the fields and forest that lay spread out before them.

“Scout Harding?” Cassandra ventures.

Harding turns and nods. The dwarven scout who Leliana spoke so highly of is heavily freckled and slightly burned from long hours in the late spring sunshine, and as her green eyes gauge Hawke she is struck with the impression that Harding, for all her talk, is distinctly unimpressed. It warms her slightly.

“Lady Seeker, the Herald of Andraste! Or do we still call you the Champion of Kirkwall? I’ve heard the stories. Everyone has. We know what you did at the Breach. Everyone’s a little nervous around mages right now, even you. But you’ll get no backtalk from me, that’s a promise. Inquisition Scout Harding, at your service. I – all of us here – we’ll do whatever we can to help.”

“Harding, huh? Ever been to Kirkwall’s Hightown?”

Hawke resists the urge to bury her face in her hands or her fist in Varric’s chest hair in anticipation of the Maker-awful pun he’s building up to. The expression on Cassandra’s face tells Hawke that she knows exactly what he’s doing too, and the two share a grimace. Harding appears naively undeterred.

“I can’t say I have. Why?”

“You’d be Harding in…”

“No.” She interjects, and Cassandra’s poisonous glare dissolves into a smile, albeit only briefly.

“What did I miss?”

“Only the worst pun you’ll hear all year. What’s the situation out there in the Hinterlands?”

Shrugging, Harding leads them to the woven wooden fence that separates the camp from a twenty foot drop down into the valley. Beneath them, figures dart between half collapsed farmhouses and rubble heaps, accompanied by Inquisition forces. Those soldiers who aren’t helping rebuild are standing watch near the edge of the village in groups of two, occasionally alongside a farmer with a makeshift bow. But there is not enough of them, and certainly not with the number of wounded stretched out at the foot of the statue.

“It used to be the Crossroads were the only place you could get away from the fighting, but lately fighting’s spread there too. Corporal Vale and our men are doing what they can to protect the people, but they won’t be able to hold out very long. We’ve been attacked from the north by apostates and from the west by Templars, to say nothing of bandits. Mother Giselle and a few of the Chantry sisters from Redcliffe have been here since it all began, helping refugees and the wounded.”

“So we’re surrounded from all sides.”

“Essentially yes. We needed an established position when we first came here to attract refugees and build up support.”

“And the Crossroads just happened to be the only place you could do it. What happened to Calenhad’s Foothold?”

Harding grimaces. “Most places were pretty overrun when we arrived. With our numbers it’s a struggle to push out any of the established encampments. Plus the rebel mage army is holed up in Redcliffe town and refusing anyone entry. The Blight hit this area hard ten years ago, I’m sure you remember. Most of the Arl’s men were killed at the Battle of Denerim, so things haven’t been looking too good around here for a while. When Anora gave this place to the rebel mages after the war broke out there was a lot of talk.”

“Talk?”

“Saying that Redcliffe picked the wrong side. Teagan took over from Arl Eamonn some years ago now, but Redcliffe still didn’t receive any help. Then Anora gave the town over to the mages, and no one’s seen the Arl in months.”

“Ah, that old story.” Varric shakes his head. “Pick the right king and you might get unlucky, but pick the wrong king…”

“Is it true?”

“Hard to tell from down here on the ground, but something to watch out for. One thing’s for sure, you won’t see a man in Fereldan uniform out there, we’re on our own.”

“But the Chantry Sisters?”

“Seems like most Templars and Mages won’t attack a Chantry Sister, but it doesn’t mean they won’t try and take out the rest of us. Until the Inquisition moved in both sides were regularly taking supplies. Most of the people down there have nothing left but the clothes on their backs. That and we’ve been having some troubles with a cult to the south. They’ve kept themselves mostly confined to Winterwatch Tower, but if you see them, be careful. They don’t seem to be violent but it’s really too early to tell.”

“Just a few things then.”

“Good luck Herald.”

With a small, deferential nod, Harding turns back to the Requisition Officer, leaving Hawke facing the mess in front of her. There is only one way, and that is forward, into the heart of a war Hawke had a hand in starting.


End file.
